Chapter 1: First Playthrough (1)
You are dead.
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"Hey! You blond bastard! Let's fight!"
What?
Rei Furuya suddenly opened his eyes as if waking from a dream, his confused and sluggish mind struggling to make sense of the situation.
He saw his friend, who had been dead for many years, suddenly appear in front of him. His figure and demeanor were noticeably more immature than before, and he was arrogantly provoking him like a childish delinquent.
Against the backdrop of a quiet, dark night and falling pink cherry blossoms, a young man with black curly hair opposite him still exudes a youthful air, with an unruly expression, and even reaches out to beckon him with a finger and sneer.
That familiar, infuriating feeling.
Rei Furuya was momentarily stunned, then stared intently at the other person before turning his head to survey his surroundings with a serious expression.
Hallucination? Mind control? Dream?
But what he saw and heard made his expression increasingly blank.
The Metropolitan Police Department Police Academy, the quiet of the night, under the blooming cherry blossoms, Matsuda Jinpei who was provoking him—it all felt so real and familiar.
Rei Furuya recalled that such an incident had occurred, and he still remembered it vividly to this day.
There's no one else but them who would agree to fight under the cherry blossoms in the middle of the night right after entering the police academy. No wonder Instructor Onizuka always said they were the most difficult class of students he had ever taught.
So, he really was reborn after he died?
A game? What game? A prank game played by God?
"What exactly are you? What do you want to do?" Furuya Rei tried to ask in his mind.
"We are both God and the devil, for we want to reverse the flow of time and bring the dead back to life." The emotionless voice answered in his mind.
Rei Furuya's heart tightened, and he asked again, but received no response.
"Hey! Hey! You damn blondie! What are you thinking? Damn it, how dare you ignore me at a time like this?" The curly-haired guy on the other side was so angry that he bristled, gritted his teeth, raised his fist, and charged at him in the face.
“Matsuda…” Furuya Rei easily dodged and precisely grabbed his hand to stop his movements, but for a moment he didn’t know what to say.
"Huh?" Matsuda Jinpei raised his eyebrows dramatically and glared at him. "What are you doing? You damn blondie, we're not the kind of people who can just call each other by our first names, are we? That tone is disgusting. What, are you trying to admit defeat and beg for mercy?"
Then, he saw the blond youth opposite him freeze for a second before revealing an expression as if he had been successfully punched hard. The real stinging pain and the incredulous look of injury made him pause in his attempt to break free.
Matsuda Jinpei: "?"
"What...what are you doing?" Matsuda Jinpei stammered, frowned, shook off his hand, took a step back, and looked at him with a suspicious expression.
Rei Furuya withdrew his hand, took a deep breath, but raised an eyebrow and smiled, "Sorry, I misread it. I thought the dark figure over there was the instructor."
Matsuda Jinpei was stunned for a moment, then instantly flew into a rage: "So! You actually tried to play the victim and frame me?!"
Rei Furuya smiled, slightly raising his chin at him, his jawline taut.
"Since no one's bothering us, let's have a fight." He raised his fist in an attack stance and taunted, "Curly-haired bastard."
"Ha, alright, watch me beat you into a pig's head!" Matsuda Jinpei cracked his knuckles, a ferocious smile spreading across his face.
"Blonde bastard!"
"Curly-haired bastard!"
With a loud shout, the two charged at each other and began to fight fiercely.
"Bang!"
"Bang!"
With two heavy thuds, cherry blossoms stirred up by the two fighters suddenly flew up in all directions, and cherry blossoms on the trees also fell in panic, brushing past them.
"Hiss, your punch is pretty good." Furuya Rei touched his stinging cheek, savoring the taste of blood in his mouth. Looking at the fiery eyes of the curly-haired youth opposite him, he felt the reality of everything even more acutely and realized that his scientific understanding was crumbling.
He was consciously in pain, the night breeze carrying the scent of cherry blossoms and Matsuda Jinpei's fist were crystal clear.
It was neither a dream nor an illusion.
That's reality.
"Hmph, your fists are not bad either." Matsuda Jinpei tilted his head and spat out a bloody denture, wiping the blood from his mouth as he spoke defiantly, but his eyes and body instantly ignited.
You have to understand that he was raised by his father, a professional boxer. Even after his father fell into depravity due to a police officer's mistake, he continued to train with everyone in the boxing gym without ever slacking off. It had been a long time since he had encountered such a formidable opponent.
The curly-haired youth got excited and roared as he charged forward again: "Again!"
However, Furuya Rei no longer wanted to come; after all, he wasn't a real 22-year-old, impetuous police academy student.
Having confirmed the reality of this world and calmed his mind, he quickly began to think about other things; he had many other things to do.
This thought also influenced his actions. After all, he couldn't very well use his extra seven years of experience to seriously bully his friend who was still a student, could he? Besides, his 29-year-old soul was still a little unaccustomed to his 22-year-old body.
But Matsuda Jinpei thought he was zoning out and was letting him win, and he exploded instantly.
"Hey! Are you underestimating me, you blond bastard!"
Jianggu Ling: "..."
Rei Furuya: "No, I just—"
Matsuda Jinpei: "Damn it! Take this!!!"
Furuya Rei stared blankly for a moment, then sighed inwardly before getting serious. He followed the opponent's lead and fought back and forth a few times before finally taking the person down completely.
Matsuda Jinpei was shocked by the sudden burst of fierceness from the blond youth, but he quickly became angry when he realized that the other party was still holding back and had even deliberately chosen a flat grassy area and adjusted his posture to prevent him from falling.
"……court death!"
"Huh!? Wait a minute—"
After another round of fighting, this time Matsuda Jinpei stopped fighting first.
He glared angrily and resentfully at the blond bastard opposite him who seemed to be fighting him to a standstill, gritted his teeth and said, "You just wait, I'll beat you to a pulp sooner or later," before storming off with heavy steps.
Matsuda Jinpei was almost driven mad with anger; he had never seen such an infuriating bastard.
The black-haired youth held the side of his face where his dentures had been knocked out, muttering to himself with a mixture of frustration and confusion. "That blond bastard is a complete weirdo. I'm getting more and more annoyed with him."
However, he had to admit that his opponent was indeed very capable.
But he absolutely won't lose again next time! He's going to start training harder tomorrow! He's determined to beat that blond bastard!
He'll knock out that blond bastard's teeth with one punch, then let's see if he dares to hold back when fighting him.
However, he always felt that the other person's previous look wasn't really an act to deceive him.
My intuition told me something was wrong, so I silently noted it down and decided to observe that strange blond jerk more closely from now on.
*
Rei Furuya kept running, running up the endlessly ascending stairs, running towards the black hole-like stairwell.
Memories overlapped at this moment, and he seemed to dream of those countless nights plagued by nightmares.
Under the pitch-black and deathly silent night sky, there were hurried and frantic footsteps, heavy and uneasy breathing, seemingly endless towering stairs, and... the person who could not be caught in time.
【Bang--】
After the gunshot, Rei Furuya's mind went blank, and his body ran to a closed door entirely according to his memory and instinct.
In the dim moonlight, he saw the name on the doorplate.
【144】
[All Hidden Formations]
His chest heaved violently, and the frantic pounding of his heart and his disordered breathing were deafening.
Rei Furuya's Adam's apple bobbed as he slowly raised his hand, but his fingertips hesitated and shrank before touching the door, as if afraid of shattering the illusion.
But he was not one to shrink back or deceive himself.
The blond youth, with a burning gaze, firmly and forcefully clenched his fist and knocked on the familiar yet unknown door.
"Thump, thump, thump."
The sound of knuckles striking the door panel, three crisp knocks exploding in my mind like thunder.
Rei Furuya's pupils constricted, and he involuntarily held his breath, then slowly relaxed, finally taking a deep breath. His dark, expectant smoky purple eyes stared fixedly ahead, waiting for the secret behind the door to be revealed.
"...Who? It's two in the morning, who could it be?"
Familiar voices could be faintly heard coming from inside the door.
Then came the sound of footsteps, gradually approaching the door, growing louder and louder, like the beating of the heart of the world.
Finally, everything stopped abruptly, followed by the crisp "click" of the doorknob.
"Squeak~"
In the quiet night, the door was slowly opened.
Right before Rei Furuya's eyes, someone he knew all too well walked out of that dark room.
Yes, no one knows the other person better than him.
That was his childhood friend who had been with him throughout his childhood, adolescence, and youth, who had gone to elementary school, junior high school, high school, university, and police academy with him, who had become a policeman with him, and even gone undercover in a criminal organization with him, but who died unexpectedly one day in a form that would haunt him as a nightmare for the rest of his life.
That was his close friend, Hiro, Kei, Morofushi Keimitsu.
Time seemed to stretch out and slow down at this moment, and everything became slow motion.
In the darkness, a young man dressed in white slowly peeked out. The moonlight illuminated his face, his black, tousled hair was slightly disheveled, and his upturned cat-like eyes slowly widened, gradually reflecting the image of a scarred, blond man.
"Zero?" the other person called him by his nickname in a tone that was both affectionate and surprised.
“...Hiro.” Furuya Rei instantly lost all his strength and collapsed onto the other man, his hands trembling as he grabbed his shoulders and leaned his head closer.
Just like on that cold and dark rooftop that night, he pressed his ear against the other person's chest, held his breath, and felt it deeply.
The body, the body is warm.
The heart, the heart is beating.
Hiro is alive! Hiro is alive!
Rei Furuya's breathing became completely disordered.
He truly returned to a time when everyone was still alive.
We've returned to a time when everything was still possible.
"Zero? Zero, are you alright? How did you get hurt like this? Does it hurt a lot? Let me see..."
Rei Furuya suddenly laughed.
“Yes, Hiro, it hurts so much. Could you bandage my wound?” he said softly. “I’ve run out of medicine.”
*
At two o'clock in the morning, Morofushi Kagemitsu was awakened by a childhood nightmare and was startled by his injured childhood friend. He quickly found the first-aid kit and began to treat his wounds.
"How did you get like this?" Morofushi Kagemitsu sighed as he carefully cleaned the blond youth's wounds with medicine and cotton swabs. "You haven't been beaten this badly in a long time. Who did this?"
"Hmph, don't worry, that guy is in a much worse situation than me." Furuya Rei chuckled smugly. "I'm the one who wins in the end."
"I am now 22-year-old Rei Furuya." He calmly told himself.
"Why are you fighting with someone again all of a sudden?" Morofushi Kagemitsu was a little helpless. He originally thought that this kind of thing would not happen frequently at the police academy, but it turns out that the semester has just started.
"It was that guy who suddenly came looking for trouble, some curly-haired bastard." Furuya Rei grimaced from the sting of the drug. "He said he couldn't stand how much I liked the police. What a weirdo, didn't he go to police academy himself?"
[I should be playing the role of 22-year-old Rei Furuya, fresh out of police academy. I absolutely cannot give myself away and be discovered by those four perceptive guys, especially my childhood friend Hiro, who knows me best.]
"But you seem pretty happy?" The young man with smooth, short black hair smiled and stuck a band-aid on his cheek. "Looks like you had a great time. Maybe you'll become good friends in the future."
"Huh? Don't be ridiculous, who would want to be friends with a guy like that!" Furuya Rei leaned back in disbelief, his eyes widening in surprise.
"Haha, I think maybe." Morofushi Kagemitsu didn't continue teasing him, afraid that his childhood friend would get angry, but he couldn't help but laugh at the other's reaction.
Rei Furuya looked at him, a slight smile creeping onto his lips as he struggled to suppress any sadness or nostalgia in his eyes.
[What kind of person was Rei Furuya at age 22, during his police academy days?]
He was the top student at the police academy, young and impetuous, arrogant and overly serious and competitive, unable to tolerate the slightest provocation. He was a young man who hadn't yet developed that level of conviction about the country. He became a policeman mainly to find Dr. Elena.
His time at the police academy had a profound impact on his life. He made important friends there, and trained alongside like-minded classmates. The five of them made a vow together in front of cherry blossoms, smiling as they said they would become police officers to protect the country, safeguard the peaceful lives of its people, and protect the world we all live in.
Later, he became a public security police officer named Rei Furuya, and together with Hiro, he went undercover in the Black Organization, transforming into the all-powerful and enigmatic Tooru Amuro and Bourbon, living a life constantly surrounded by death and danger, walking between darkness and light, and possessing multiple identities.
Later, one by one, the four men died in the line of duty, leaving this world, until only he remained alive.
So he continued to uphold everyone's beliefs and protect the country they had lived in, until finally sacrificing himself for the people, dying in the darkness before dawn during the final battle. Although he couldn't stand in the sunlight openly under his real name and appearance after the organization's destruction, he was content to have witnessed its demise.
[29-year-old Rei Furuya is a little tired.]
But at 22, Rei Furuya had experienced nothing yet. He was young, naive, impulsive, and had so much to learn.
But he was happy.
He hasn't lost anything yet.
He has everything.
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