Leon was in his room, sprawled across the bed, reading manga with his headphones on. He was too absorbed in the book to notice anything else until he was interrupted.
A knock sounded on his door.
"Come in," he said in an annoyed tone.
The door opened.
A girl with short brown hair stepped into the room and glanced at the mess scattered across the floor.
"Leonar."
Leon didn't look up from his manga.
"Hm."
"The ceremony already started."
"So?"
Mira crossed her arms.
"The sponsors are here and...all the children from the orphanage are attending."
Leon turned a page.
"Sounds like everything's going according to plan."
"Which is why you should come."
Leon clicked his tongue.
"I'm not one of them."
Mira folded her arms.
"You were."
Leon shrugged.
"Not anymore."
She watched him for a moment before exhaling quietly.
"I know," she said. "But it would be nice if you pretended to care for ten minutes."
Leon sat up slightly.
"You run charity events for rich people with guilty consciences."
"And you live in the apartment owned by the person who organises them."
Leon shrugged.
"I pay rent."
Mira raised an eyebrow.
"Barely."
"It's still rent."
She stared at him for a moment, then shook her head.
"Just come downstairs when you're done sulking."
Leon waved his hand dismissively.
"I'll be there soon, Mira."
She flinched slightly when he said her name, as if hearing it from him always carried an edge she wasn't used to.
Her expression softened for a moment.
"...Don't take too long."
Then she turned and left.
Leon sighed. He had no interest in attending another charity ceremony.
Events like these were Mira's idea. She had a strange talent for convincing wealthy sponsors to fund programs for orphanages. Cameras would appear, speeches would be made, and wealthy donors would congratulate themselves for their generosity.
The children usually got something out of it — gifts, money, sometimes even scholarships.
Leon knew the system well enough.
He had spent most of his childhood moving from one orphanage to another, usually after running away or getting kicked out for his behaviour.
Eventually, he stopped trying to stay anywhere at all. These days he mostly worked part-time jobs and kept to himself.
He wasn't old enough to be paying rent, or working part-time jobs for that matter. He did both anyway. Charity left a taste in his mouth worse than bad food — at least bad food was honest about what it was.
He closed his manga and sighed.
'Screw this.'
He smiled faintly as he walked over to the window. With practiced ease, he climbed down the building and began walking away.
Not wanting to bother with silly events, he hummed a quiet tune and thought about the next manga he planned to read, along with the next shift he had to work.
He stopped by his favorite shop to buy milk chocolate. In the past, things like that had been a luxury, so he'd never lost his love for it.
After buying a bar, he continued walking down the street, savouring every bite.
A small smile appeared on his face as the chocolate melted on his tongue. It was always the expensive ones that dissolved too easily, but he still liked the feeling.
Glass shattered somewhere behind him. Then gunshots.
Leon stopped walking.
'Gunshots? What's happening?'
A man came around the corner, sprinting with a black mask and gun in hand. Two officers were close behind and closing fast. The chocolate slipped from Leon's fingers before he'd even decided to let it go.
For a split second, Leon considered running. But the man was too close.
As the masked man lunged forward, Leon reacted on instinct. He twisted sideways and shoved his shoulder into the man's chest, trying to knock him off balance.
It almost worked.
But the man was larger — and faster.
A rough hand clamped around Leon's collar and yanked him backwards. The air rushed out of his lungs as the man dragged him, pinning him in place.
Before Leon could struggle again, the barrel of a gun pressed against his temple.
"MOVE, AND THE KID DIES!" The man shouted.
The police officers froze several steps away.
One of them slowly raised his hands.
"Easy!" the officer called out. "Don't do anything stupid."
The man's grip tightened slightly around Leon's neck. Leon could feel the cold metal of the gun pressing against his temple.
The street, which had been noisy only moments ago, had fallen completely silent.
Leon's eyes shifted slightly, studying the street.
The police officers stood several meters away. One had his hand near his holster, but he wasn't moving.
People nearby had already scattered. A few cars had stopped in the distance. The entire street felt frozen.
The man leaned closer to Leon's ear.
"You're lucky, kid," he muttered. "You just became very useful."
Useful.
Leon swallowed slowly.
Maybe...there was still a chance.
The police officer on the right slowly raised his gun.
"Release the boy, Tefa!"
Tefa let out a harsh laugh.
"Throw your guns toward me."
The officer hesitated for a moment.
Then he fired.
BANG!
The bullet struck Tefa in the shoulder.
"AGH!"
The masked man screamed in pain, his grip tightening violently around Leon.
Without hesitation, Tefa pulled the trigger.
Everything fell silent.
For a brief moment, no one moved.
The bar of chocolate on the pavement continued to melt slowly under the warm evening air.
Then there was the dull sound of a body collapsing onto the ground.
Leon's lifeless eyes stared blankly ahead, fixed on the melting chocolate a few steps away.
Something warm spread across the pavement beside him as blood flowed from the wound in his head.
The dark red slowly mixed with the soft brown of the melted chocolate.
The colors blended together as the world around him faded into darkness.
***
Darkness.
Leon couldn't see anything.
'Did I...die?'
His thoughts were scattered and slow. He hadn't expected to die. Death had always seemed distant to him. Leon had never been someone who clung desperately to life — he had always wanted to live without restraints or regrets.
Even on the streets, death rarely came quickly. Hunger took time to kill you. Thirst was slow and painful.
He had never imagined it could be so instant.
Just the movement of a finger.
And suddenly...he was gone.
Before Leon could gather his thoughts any further, his eyes opened.
But he was no longer in the place where he had died.
He looked around.
Garbage was everywhere.
Leon's eyes widened as a horrible stench filled his nose. His stomach lurched violently. He bent forward and vomited onto the ground.
'Where am I?'
After a moment, he wiped his mouth and forced himself to look around again. Rows of crude houses surrounded him.
They looked as though they had been assembled from scraps pulled straight out of a junkyard — rusted sheets of metal, broken wood, and torn plastic stitched together into crooked walls.
Most of them leaned at strange angles, as if a strong push would be enough to make them collapse.
People were sleeping on the floor, looking skinny and malnourished.
'Is this...hell?'
Leon looked around and began walking, unsure where he was.
The entire place reeked. Everywhere he looked, garbage swallowed the streets.
Leon felt exhausted. His eyelids grew heavy, and his body felt as though it were weighed down by dozens of kilograms, even though he was only walking.
'So...sleepy.'
But he couldn't afford to sleep in an unknown place. Forcing himself to stay alert, Leon quickened his pace while carefully observing his surroundings.
In one corner, a child was crouched on the ground, eating scraps straight off the floor. Not far away, a naked man lay on his back in the open street, sleeping without the slightest trace of shame.
Leon felt a wave of disgust.
Even when he had been homeless, he had never seen sights this terrible — never witnessed people reduced to such miserable conditions.
Yet his exhaustion only grew worse, as though he had not slept in days. If he closed his eyes now, he knew he would fall asleep immediately.
Eventually, after running around, he exited what he thought to be the slums. He stepped onto a much busier street.
People passed by constantly, but anyone who glanced at Leon either looked at him with open disgust or quickly avoided his gaze altogether.
The place felt strangely familiar, yet unmistakably different. Leon tensed up — he couldn't recognize the streets.
He began moving faster, turning corners and scanning buildings, hoping to find something, anything, that looked familiar.
Several times he considered approaching the people walking past him, but the expressions they gave him made him stop himself.
He finally calmed down after moving around confused. But something else had been nagging at him since he woke up. His body felt wrong somehow. Not just unfamiliar — wrong. Like wearing clothes that belonged to someone else and finding they almost fit.
Looking down, Leon's eyes widened in horror. His body was thin and frail, his limbs bony beneath the skin. The clothes hanging from him were nothing more than a few torn rags.
'Did I...go back in time?'
As ridiculous as the idea sounded, Leon had always been someone who drowned himself in fiction and novels. Stories about reincarnation, other worlds, and impossible chances had always fascinated him.
He had even wished for something like that once, but it seemed unlikely.
He couldn't recognize the place he was in. Perhaps he had simply ended up in another country.
Yet the city around him felt strange. It looked less like a city and more like a fortress built for war. Every building was reinforced with thick metal plating, as if it had been designed to survive a hurricane without so much as a crack.
The air smelled faintly of concrete, antiseptic, and cheap food.
Everyone he passed moved with quiet urgency, their heads lowered, their steps quick — as if the city itself was watching them.
He noticed armored vehicles passing through the streets. None of them looked like the ones he had seen back home. Every vehicle was covered in reinforced plating, as if each one were military grade.
They were dull and lifeless — stripped of the shiny logos and bright advertisements that usually covered civilian cars.
But what truly unsettled Leon were the signs posted everywhere. Every block or two, he passed another one.
"CARRIERS OF THE NIGHTMARE SPELL MUST SURRENDER IMMEDIATELY"
A few streets later, another sign caught his attention.
"FOURTH SPECIAL DIRECTIVE IN EFFECT
NIGHTMARE SPELL CARRIERS MUST SURRENDER IMMEDIATELY"
Leon frowned.
At first, he was simply confused. He couldn't recall ever hearing about something called the Nightmare Spell.
Maybe it was some kind of weapon. Or a new drug that had spread across the market.
'The Fourth Directive...?'
That was unfamiliar as well. As far as he knew, nothing like that had ever existed where he came from.
Still wandering through the streets and mentally mapping the area in his head, Leon struggled to keep moving.
His body felt heavier with every step. Eventually, he stumbled and bumped into someone.
Leon looked up.
A large man stood before him, broad-shouldered and towering over him. The stranger glanced down with an irritated expression.
"Watch it, kid."
Without waiting for a response, the man continued walking.
Leon remained where he was as faint murmurs spread among the nearby pedestrians.
He could hear fragments of their whispers.
"That boy just bumped into an Awakened. What rotten luck."
"Why are these outskirts rats everywhere these days?"
Leon froze.
Awakened.
The word struck him like lightning. He had read that word before. Then it clicked.
'Shadow Slave... Nightmare Spell...'
The novel he had read — Shadow Slave. In that story, the Nightmare Spell dragged ordinary humans into deadly trials, forcing them to fight for survival inside twisted dream worlds.
Leon felt his breath grow shallow.
The armored buildings.
The reinforced vehicles.
The tense behavior of the people around him.
It all made sense now.
They weren't afraid of a terrorist attack. They were afraid of something far worse — a Nightmare Gate opening without warning.
Leon's sleepy eyes were widening in horror.
Had he been sent into the novel?
'No...that can't be it. Maybe this is some kind of elaborate advertisement to promote it. Maybe it even got an anime adaptation...'
Leon felt too exhausted to keep wandering. He finally sat down on a nearby bench and rubbed his tired eyes.
"Where even am I...?" he muttered under his breath.
A quiet sipping sound came from beside him. Leon turned toward it.
Sitting on the other end of the bench was a frail-looking young man with pale skin and dark circles under his eyes. The stranger cradled a cup of coffee in both hands, taking small sips while grimacing at the taste each time.
Leon glanced up from the bench. Across the street stood a police station. Men dressed in dark navy uniforms walked in and out of the building.
'No...'
Leon slowly turned back to the young man. Forcing a polite smile, he spoke.
"Hey...um...m-may I know your name?"
The young man looked at him, raising an eyebrow. He stayed silent for a moment before answering in a quiet voice.
"Sunless."