The secret apartments of the "Strawberry Productions" agency were located on the twenty-fifth floor of an elite complex in Minato.
Armored doors, tinted bulletproof glass, two security cordons downstairs, and absolute soundproofing.
It was so quiet here that it felt as if the rest of Tokyo had simply ceased to exist.
The contrast with the hell that had unfolded on the Budokan stage a couple of hours ago was colossal.
Marin Kitagawa was sitting cross-legged on a huge white leather sofa. Around her, like the petals of a strange flower, were scattered pieces of black protective fabric, threads, needles, and a tablet with open sewing patterns.
She was fiercely stitching something by hand, frowning and periodically adjusting the pink hairpin sliding down her forehead.
Opposite her, behind a low glass table, sat Ai Hoshino. Japan's greatest idol had changed into an oversized, fluffy yellow bunny-hooded pajamas and was currently devouring a slice of "Four Cheese" pizza delivered by the agency's courier with undisguised pleasure.
— "So that means..." — Ai thoughtfully licked the melted cheese off her thumb, cutely tilting her head. Laughter danced in her starry eyes.
— "Your Gojo-kun... he's not a stylist at all, is he?"
— "He's not mine!" — Marin blushed deeply, almost pricking her finger with the needle.
— "And... yes, he's not a stylist. He's a Hunter. It's just... well, he had some temporary difficulties with his mana. And he is very proud."
— "Proud?" — Ai giggled quietly, dangling her legs in the air. Behind the mask of a carefree girl, a very sharp, tenacious look of a person used to reading people's souls suddenly flashed.
— "Marin-chan, this guy was bleeding out on the white tiles of my dressing room. His mana channels were sparking, he could barely stand, but at the same time, he was bossing us around as if we were the frightened kids here, and not him dying."
Ai took another bite of pizza, squinting contentedly.
— "But you know what the funniest part is? Usually, people look at me either with adoration or with a thirst for profit. They want to touch the «star». But he looked at me as if I was just... an ordinary girl. Who needed to be quickly shoved into a tinted car so she wouldn't get in the way."
The idol smiled dreamily, leaning back against the cushions.
— "If he survives today, I'll demand that President Saito hire him as my personal bodyguard. I'll make him buy me ice cream at night."
Marin set the fabric aside and sighed heavily. Genuine anxiety could be read in her eyes.
— "I... I don't even know, Ai-chan," — the cosplayer admitted honestly, nervously fiddling with the edge of the black fabric.
— "He's just incredible. It's like a cool shonen manga character stepped off the pages into the real world. But he doesn't take care of himself at all! Right now, he's wandering somewhere around Tokyo with burnt channels, trying to 'stretch his legs'."
Marin sniffled, and tears welled up in her eyes, but she immediately brushed them away angrily with the back of her hand.
— "And if he... if something happens to him in some dark alley... I won't forgive him! I spent so many sleepless nights hand-stitching this exclusive jacket! And he went out there to bleed and fight monsters right in it! The fabric will be ruined!"
Ai reached for a napkin, intending to cutely tease her friend a little more, when suddenly her phone on the table buzzed briefly.
And then Marin's phone.
And then the huge wall-mounted plasma screen connected to the "Smart Home" system suddenly woke up from sleep mode.
The apartment's artificial intelligence automatically displayed an emergency news broadcast that was currently airing on all central channels.
— "«Emergency broadcast! Anomalous activity in the Shinjuku and Shibuya districts!»" — broadcasted a pretty anchorwoman, against the backdrop of which flickering footage shot from a news helicopter flashed.
— "«The Hunter Association is in confusion! Someone is intercepting opening Gates before official guilds arrive!»"
Marin dropped her needle. Ai froze with the napkin in her hands.
The picture on the screen changed. A video shot on a phone by a passerby on a night street. The quality was poor, but the zoom caught the main thing.
Along the neon-lit street, startling passersby, ran a tall guy with snow-white hair.
There was a thick black blindfold over his eyes, and his dark blue jacket (that very exclusive one!) was smeared from head to toe with something green and purple.
In his right hand, like a rag doll, he was dragging a crying blond in a school uniform, who was clutching a huge, jingling sack to his chest.
— "«Make way! Step aside! The grind waits for no one! We're losing EXP!»" — a familiar, arrogant voice rang out clearly from the TV speakers.
— "«According to eyewitnesses,»" — the anchorwoman continued completely seriously, while on the screen the guy in the blindfold gracefully leaped over two teenagers fighting on the sidewalk, — "«this unknown duo has already cleared two dungeons in a row at a speed inaccessible even to S-rank guilds.»"
— "«Some witnesses claim that the white-haired Hunter engages in hand-to-hand combat with Bosses, while his companion... collects the corpses of magical cockroaches from the floor.»"
— "Cockroaches?.." — Marin whispered. Her face fell, and then she grabbed her head in horror.
— "The jacket... my perfect jacket... in the slime of magical cockroaches... Gojo-kun, why-y-y..."
Ai Hoshino silently watched the screen for a few seconds. Her starry eyes widened in amazement.
And then... then she simply collapsed against the back of the sofa, bursting into ringing, absolutely sincere, and pure laughter.
Not that professional laugh she gave to fans, but a real one, to the point of tears.
In a world where everyone pretended and wore masks of perfect people, this white-haired guy was creating absolute, primal chaos in front of the entire country.
And Ai was endlessly fascinated by it.
— "Oh my god!" — the idol laughed, holding her stomach. — "Marin, where did you find him?! He's just an amazing psycho!"
At that moment, the picture on the screen changed again. A banner appeared: [LIVE: YOYOGI PARK].
The camera showed the square in front of a huge purple C-rank portal. There was a cordon, reporters, and elite Hunters in armor from the "Silver Wolves" guild.
And right in the center of this perfect composition, out of nowhere, with the crackle of torn space, two figures materialized.
The camera zoomed in for a close-up. The entire country saw live how the white-haired guy casually tossed aside a two-meter C-rank tank like an annoying fly.
And the whole country heard the hysterical shriek of his companion.
— "«I'M SOOOORRY! WE DID IT BY ACCIDENT! I'M NOT WITH HIM! THIS IS ABUSE! I'M A MINOR!»"
The white-haired guy just chuckled, dragging the screaming schoolboy straight into the deadly C-rank portal, ignoring the shouts of the guards.
The Gate rippled, swallowing them both.
A ringing silence hung in the apartment. Only the TV announcer frantically tried to find the right words.
— "Marin," — Ai sat up abruptly, wiping away tears of laughter. Genuine excitement burned in her eyes.
— "Let's keep watching. It seems your shonen manga character is about to break not only the Hunter system but the entire internet."
The internet didn't just explode. It flared up like a dry forest from a thrown match and blazed with primal chaos.
Just three minutes after the white-haired guy with the blindfold materialized live in front of the elite of the Hunter Association, the Japanese segment of Twitter and all the largest anonymous forums crashed from the overload.
Algorithms went crazy trying to process the avalanche of posts. New hashtags instantly soared into Japan's top 10 trending topics:
[ #GojoSatoruIRL #HunterSystemHack #WhiteHairedDemon #SaveTheSchoolboy #SilverWolvesDisgraced ]
On the country's largest anonymous imageboard, the discussion thread was flying at the speed of light.
Users built theories, argued, and churned out memes on an industrial scale:
[ Anon_201: People, did you see that?! The dude literally folded his fingers and cast
aspatial teleport! Exactly like in the manga! I swear, that's the cursed technique «Blue»! ]
[ Anon_202: Calm down, you nerds. It's just an aggressive PR campaign by the Association.
They're probably advertising a new Hunter gacha game or a"Jujutsu Kaisen" movie. ]
[ Anon_203: A PR campaign?! Answer me, smartass, since when does an A-rank guild allow their main tank to be tossed aside like a bag of trash for "PR"?
That white-haired guy blew him away with one wave of his hand! He's a real monster! ]
[ Anon_204: And who's that little kid with him? Looks like a typical alley thug.
He had a rusty knife in his hand, lol. ]
[ Anon_205: That's his hostage, 100%. Did you hear how he screamed? "I'm a minor!". ]
The white-haired maniac just kidnapped a random schoolboy to carry his loot. Free Megumi on a budget! ]
――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――
Marin sat on the sofa, endlessly refreshing the feed on her tablet. Her eyes darted quickly across the lines of comments, and her breathing became increasingly erratic.
Ai, having finished her pizza, peeked over her shoulder with interest, giggling at every new meme.
Someone had already managed to make a photoshopped image: the face of a screaming Takemichi pasted onto the body of Princess Peach, being carried away by a Bowser wearing a black blindfold.
— "Oh, Marin-chan, look!" — the idol joyfully poked her elegant finger at the screen.
— "They are discussing his costume here! I'm reading:"«The cosplay is high quality, sure, but the jacket is kind of weird. A cheap replica from Akihabara? Why is it covered in some green and purple spots?»"
Marin froze. Her pupils constricted, and the hand gripping the tablet turned white from tension.
— "A cheap... replica... from Akihabara?" — the cosplayer's voice trembled, dropping to a dangerous, almost demonic whisper.
She jumped up from the sofa abruptly, nearly knocking over the table with the empty pizza box.
— "A CHEAP REPLICA?!" — Marin shrieked at the ceiling, waving the tablet.
— "I blew the budget of an entire premium cosplay series on that reinforced fabric with mana-repellent impregnation! Every seam there is hand-stitched with double Kevlar thread! It's an exclusive! A masterpiece! If that long-legged idiot hadn't gone hugging acid monsters, it would have fit him perfectly! I will find this Anon by their IP and make them eat their words!"
Ai collapsed back onto the sofa again, bursting into loud laughter. Her friend's anger seemed incredibly amusing to her, and the whole situation impossibly absurd.
— "Calm down, Marin-chan," — Ai wiped her tears.
— "You better think about the fact that when your Gojo-kun gets out of the C-rank Gate... he'll have to answer questions from very serious people in suits. But for now... let's see who else recognized this poor schoolboy from the TV."
――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――
At that exact same time. The Shibuya district. A cheap, smoke-filled family diner where teenagers who had nowhere to go usually gathered.
Two people sat at a corner table.
One — a tall, strongly built guy with shaved sides and a characteristic dragon tattoo on his temple. Ken Ryuguji, also known as Draken.
The second — a short blonde with cold, almost empty eyes, who right now, with childlike focus, was poking a fork into his ordered "kids' meal," trying to find a paper flag in there.
Manjiro Sano, the invincible Mikey, leader of the Tokyo Manji Gang.
Things were tense for Toman right now. The conflict with Moebius had only just died down, leaving behind a bitter aftertaste and a pile of problems, and a new threat in the form of the headless angel — "Valhalla" — was already looming on the horizon.
The atmosphere on the streets was electrified to the limit.
Draken was lazily scrolling through the news feed on his smartphone, while Mikey finally, triumphantly, stuck the found flag into the mound of rice.
— "Hey, Mikey," — Draken's voice suddenly changed. The relaxed tone vanished from it, giving way to genuine bewilderment.
— "Hm-m?" — Mikey looked up at his friend with stuffed cheeks.
— "Didn't you say that Takemichi disappeared somewhere today? Said he had important business?"
Draken turned the phone screen toward his commander.
— "Take a look at this. It seems our crybaby hero found himself problems worse than the thugs from Valhalla."
Mikey stopped chewing. His dark eyes focused on the screen.
There, in the news broadcast recording, a guy with white hair and a blindfold, smeared with monster blood, was dragging their new friend — Takemichi Hanagaki — by the scruff of the neck.
And he was screaming as if he were being led to his execution, waving a rusty cleaver.
— "Are those... Hunter Gates?" — Draken frowned, feeling a chill run down his spine.
Hunters lived in a completely different world, where ordinary delinquents were strictly forbidden to meddle. That was a matter of national security.
— "What the hell is Takemichi doing there? And who is that psycho with him?"
Mikey silently watched for a few seconds as the white-haired guy sent a fully armored elite Hunter flying with one lazy wave of his hand.
The corners of the Toman leader's lips slowly crept up, revealing a faint, anticipatory smile.
— "What an interesting guy," — Mikey said quietly, swallowing his food. A dangerous spark flared in his eyes, one that only appeared when he met someone truly strong.
— "Kenchin... do you think if I hit him with all my strength, he'll fall? I want to fight him."
— "Idiot, those are Hunters! They tear monsters to pieces with magic!" — Draken barked, although he himself couldn't tear his eyes away from the screen.
— "We need to get Takemichi out of there before that cosplayer gets him killed!"
――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――
And in another part of the city, in a modest apartment, Hinata Tachibana stood frozen in front of the TV screen.
She sat on the floor, forgetting about her unfinished homework, and pressed her hands to her mouth in horror.
The TV was replaying the exact moment where the white-haired Hunter dragged a resisting Takemichi right into the ominous, purple C-rank portal.
— "Takemichi-kun..." — Hinata whispered, feeling tears well up in her eyes.
With trembling hands, she grabbed her phone and frantically started dialing his number. There was no ringing tone.
An answering machine mechanically informed her that the subscriber was out of network coverage. The magical background of the dungeon jammed any signals.
Her boyfriend, who just yesterday promised her that everything would be fine and he would protect everyone, was now in a death trap with some maniac Hunter.
— "Please... be alive, Takemichi-kun..."
The world continued to go crazy, news channel ratings broke historical records, and somewhere out there, in the damp darkness of the C-rank dungeon, Satoru Gojo had no idea what kind of media bomb he had just detonated.
――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――
The headquarters of the Public Safety Bureau towered over nocturnal Tokyo like a monolithic dark spire.
On the top floor, in a spacious office with panoramic windows, perfect, calculated silence reigned.
Makima sat in a deep leather chair. A golden retriever snuffled peacefully on her lap, and on the polished mahogany desk lay a tablet broadcasting that very emergency news report.
The main lighting in the office wasn't turned on; only the dim light from the screen fell on her face, reflecting in her unusual, golden eyes with concentric circles.
Makima watched the white-haired guy with the blindfold intently, without blinking.
The way he moved. The way he crumpled space with one careless gesture, ignoring the Hunters' barriers, and playfully scattered the vanguard C-rank fighters of a powerful guild.
There wasn't a single registered user with such a cursed energy signature or spatial magic in the Bureau's database. An anomaly.
A dangerous, uncontrollable, annoyingly strong anomaly that was breaking the established order right now.
But that wasn't the only thing that interested her.
Makima rewound the recording ten seconds back. She turned the volume up to maximum.
On the screen, the white-haired guy was dragging the resisting schoolboy into the portal.
— "I'M SOOOORRY! WE DID IT BY ACCIDENT! I'M NOT WITH HIM! THIS IS ABUSE! I'M A MINOR! MAKIMA WILL KILL ME!"
She paused it exactly at the moment when the screaming blonde's face appeared in a close-up.
Makima slowly traced her elegant finger across the screen, outlining the tear-stained, panic-distorted face of Takemichi Hanagaki.
Her phenomenal memory, which stored dossiers on every more or less significant person, Hunter, or devil in Japan, yielded a result instantly: she didn't know this boy.
He wasn't a Hunter. He wasn't listed in any of the Bureau's divisions. He was a nobody.
An ordinary middle school delinquent.
She had never met him in this life.
Then why was he screaming her name?
Makima zoomed in on his eyes. And what she saw there made the corners of her lips slowly creep up into a chilling smile.
There was no simple panic from seeing monsters in this boy's eyes. There was a primal, deeply rooted, almost animalistic terror splashing in them.
It wasn't a fear of the unknown — it was PTSD. The fear of a subordinate before a ruthless master.
The fear of a broken dog that knows for sure it will be butchered for the slightest misstep.
And this fear was directed personally at her. At a woman he had never met in this life.
What Makima didn't know and couldn't even guess was that Takemichi Hanagaki was a regressor.
A time-leaper who tried to rewrite fate over and over again.
In one of his past lives, in a long-erased timeline, he had the misfortune of working for her.
And she had trained him so brutally that this conditioned reflex broke through even memory loss and the reboot of the universe, triggering like a cruel flashback in a moment of extreme stress.
To Makima, however, it looked like an incredibly intriguing, mesmerizing puzzle.
— "How interesting," — Makima said quietly, scratching the sleeping retriever behind the ear.
Her voice was as soft as velvet, but it sent a chill down the spine.
— "A boy I don't know fears me as if I've been breaking his psyche for years. And his new white-haired friend, it seems, doesn't know how to wear a collar at all."
She reached out and pressed the intercom button on the desk.
— "Aki-kun," — she called into the microphone.
— "Yes, Makima-san," — Aki Hayakawa's strict voice instantly came from the speaker.
— "Gather a squad. Take Denji and Power with you if they've finished their patrol. Head to Yoyogi Park. When those two come out of the C-rank Gate... I want you to bring them to me. Alive. Especially the blonde one."
――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――
Meanwhile, the situation in Yoyogi Park was heating up to the limit.
The square in front of the C-rank portal resembled a disturbed anthill. Journalists shouted into microphones, cameramen shoved each other trying to get the best angle, and the fighters of the "Silver Wolves" guild stood with faces red from shame and fury.
The guild leader, that very muscular tank whom Gojo had tossed aside with one finger, was furiously yelling at the Hunter Association officials.
— "You let civilians into an active C-rank! Do you even understand that this is a scandal of national scale?!"
— he sprayed saliva, waving his two-handed sword.
— "The Acid Rot Queen is in there! That blind show-off and his little screaming lackey have already dissolved in her stomach! And who will be held responsible for their deaths?!"
— "Calm down!" — a sweating clerk in a strict suit bleated. — "We are already preparing an emergency response team! You will go in there and..."
His words were cut short by a loud, pulsating hum.
Everyone in the square — elite Hunters, reporters, police in the cordon — sharply turned their heads toward the Gate.
The purple haze of the portal, which had been swirling ominously just a second ago, suddenly rippled heavily. As if a stone had hit the water.
And then the color of the magic began to change rapidly. The toxic purple hue faded, bleached, and was replaced by a calm, safe blue glow.
The silence that descended on the square was absolute. You could only hear the quiet click of a camera shutter in the hands of one of the cameramen.
Any first-year student at the Hunter Academy knew what this meant. The portal's changes to this one only changes in one case.
If the Dungeon Boss is killed.
— "This... this is impossible," — the leader of the "Silver Wolves" whispered, dropping his two-handed sword.
The blade clattered against the asphalt, but no one even flinched.
— "It's only been... it's only been twenty minutes..."
Twenty minutes to clear a C-rank dungeon. Without healers. Without tanks. A duo.
More accurately — by the power of one madman in a blindfold, because the second one went in there with a rusty knife and pants full of fear.
The Hunter world, with its strict hierarchy, rules, and multi-hour raids, was collapsing right now before the eyes of millions of viewers.
The blue surface of the portal rippled.
Cameramen frantically pressed their faces to the viewfinders. Policemen instinctively placed their hands on their holsters.
From the depths of the blue glow, two silhouettes began to emerge. They were returning.