novelraw Chapter 41: Taste of Normalcy
Chapter 41: Taste of Normalcy
The Ginza district had once been the heartbeat of Tokyo’s luxury. It was a place of polished marble, glowing screens, and air that smelled like expensive perfume and ambition. Now, it was a skeleton of steel and shadows. The "Blood-Rust" had settled deep into the cracks of the designer storefronts, turning the vibrant district into a monochromatic graveyard.
Ren Hanshin walked down the center of Harumi-dori avenue. He didn’t use his divine senses to scan for traps. The silence itself was the trap. It was an unnatural quiet that made every one of his footsteps sound like a gunshot. He was hungry. It was a strange, grounding sensation. Despite his demigod status, his stomach was growling. It was a lingering echo of his mortality, a stubborn reminder from his body that he was still the boy who used to skip lunch to save money for his sister’s medicine.
He spotted a convenience store tucked into the ground floor of a partially collapsed skyscraper. The windows were shattered, and the neon sign was hanging by a single wire, but the interior looked relatively untouched by the holy fire that had razed Shinjuku.
Ren stepped inside. The bell above the door gave a pathetic, dying chime. Inside, the air was cool and smelled of stale plastic. The shelves were mostly bare, stripped by looters or panicked survivors weeks ago. Ren walked past the empty snack aisles, his boots crunching on broken glass. He wasn’t looking for high-tier mana potions or enchanted rations.
He was looking for Jubei’s favorite brand of sake, and maybe a bag of spicy shrimp crackers. He found a single, dusty bottle of sake hidden behind a knocked-over display of magazines. He picked it up, wiping the iron dust from the label with his thumb. Then, in the back of the refrigerated section, which was no longer cold, he found a crumpled bag of crackers.
It was a small victory. A taste of normalcy in a world that had forgotten the meaning of the word. Ren walked toward the counter. He didn’t just take the items. Habit, ingrained through years of being a proper citizen before the world broke, made him reach into his pocket. He pulled out a crumpled 1,000-yen note. It was worthless now, the currency of a fallen government but he placed it on the counter anyway.
"Keeping the economy alive, Mr. Hanshin? How very... quaint of you."
Ren didn’t flinch. He simply opened the bag of crackers and took a bite. They were stale, but the spice was real. It burned his tongue in a way that felt honest.
"Loki," Ren said, his voice muffled by the crackers.
From the shadows behind the cigarette rack, a figure emerged. He wasn’t wearing the tactical suit of the Oversight Committee. He was wearing a purple velvet tuxedo, looking as if he had just stepped off a stage in old Las Vegas. His emerald eyes were bright, dancing with a chaotic light that made Ren’s skin crawl.
Loki Vance leaned against the lottery machine, spinning a silver coin across his knuckles.
"You look tired, Ren," Loki said, his voice smooth and melodic. "The silver hair suits you, though. It gives you that ’tortured savior’ aesthetic that the middle-aged goddesses really go for. How is the Weaver? Is she still whispering sweet nothings about unmaking the universe in your ear?"
[The God of Fate is screeching, a sound like grinding metal in Ren’s skull.]
[God of Fate]: KILL HIM! SEVER HIS TONGUE! I WILL NOT HAVE THIS MAGGOT SPEAKING MY NAME!
Ren ignored her. He took another bite of a cracker, chewed slowly, and then looked at Loki.
"You’re harvesting," Ren said. It wasn’t a question. "Arthur Vance told me you’re collecting divine cores from the battlefields. What are you building, Loki? A bigger joke?"
Loki’s grin widened, but it didn’t reach his eyes. "Building? No, no. I’m an artist, Ren. I’m just... gathering materials for my masterwork. You see, the Sovereigns are very loud, but they are predictable. Light wants to burn. War wants to crush. Death wants to rot. They’re all so... one dimensional."
Loki stepped closer, the silver coin disappearing into his palm. "But you? You’re a glitch. You’re a porter who found a scythe and decided to cut the sky. You’re the only thing in this world that isn’t a cliché."
"Is that why you’re here?" Ren asked, his crimson eyes narrowing. "To tell me I’m special?"
"I’m here to give you a warning," Loki said, his voice dropping to a whisper. "The ’Ceasefire’ is a lie. The Sovereigns didn’t retreat because they were afraid of you. They retreated because they realized they couldn’t win as long as the Weaver was holding your leash. They’re meeting in the Astral Void, drafting a new law. A law that will evade the 49% synchronization lock."
Ren felt a cold chill. The lock was the only thing keeping him as normal. If the Gods found a way to force the synchronization to 100%, he wouldn’t be Ren Hanshin anymore. He would be a Sovereign-tier monster with no human conscience.
"Why tell me?" Ren asked. "You’re an Avatar of Mischief. You thrive on chaos."
"I thrive on chaos, yes," Loki said, stepping toward the exit. "But I hate a boring ending, and a world where everyone is a mindless puppet of the Weaver is the most boring ending I can imagine."
Loki stopped at the door, the dying chime of the bell ringing again. He looked back over his shoulder.
"Enjoy your crackers, Ren, and the sake. It’s the last taste of ’normal’ you’re going to get for a very, very long time."
Loki vanished into a flurry of purple playing cards. The smell of lavender and smoke lingered for a moment, then was swallowed by the cold scent of the iron dust. Ren stood in the empty Lawson, the bag of crackers halfway to his mouth. He looked at the 1,000-yen note on the counter.
He felt a sudden impulse to scream. To burn the store down. To fly into the sky and keep cutting until there was nothing left but black space. But he didn’t. He slowly folded the top of the cracker bag, tucked the sake bottle under his arm, and walked out into the purple night.
Ren walked toward the Ginza Crossing. The famous four way intersection was a graveyard of abandoned buses and shattered glass. In the center of the crossing, he saw a group of survivors. They were huddled around a small fire made of broken furniture.
They saw him coming. Unlike the people in the camp, these weren’t just terrified civilians. These were the scavengers, people who had stayed in the Grey Zones, living on their wits and whatever they could steal.
"Who’s that?" one of them whispered, clutching a rusted pipe.
"Look at the hair. It’s the Tyrant. The one from the mountains."
The group scrambled backward, their eyes filled with a primal, animalistic fear. One woman accidentally tripped, her small bag of collected canned goods spilling across the asphalt. She just crawled away, her eyes fixed on Ren as if he were a demon.
Ren stopped. He looked at the cans of peaches and tuna scattered on the ground.
"I’m not going to hurt you," Ren said. His voice was low, meant to be comforting, but in the silence of the night, it sounded like a threat.
The woman just huddled against a rusted bus, her breath coming in short gasps. Ren realized then that Loki was right. Normalcy had been murdered. He could buy a bag of crackers, he could pour sake for Jubei, and he could speak softly, but the world no longer had a place for Ren Hanshin the human.
The crown he wore, the invisible Crown of the Zenith was a wall. It separated him from the mud, from the hunger, and from the people he was trying to save. To them, he was just another Sovereign. Just another God playing with their lives. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the bag of crackers. He walked over to the scattered cans and placed the bag on the ground next to them. Then, he took the sake bottle and placed it there too.
He just turned and walked away. As he reached the edge of the intersection, he heard the sound of the woman scurrying forward to grab the food. He heard her frantic whispers to the others.
[God of Fate]: Why do you give them your food, Ren? You are hungry. You need your strength. They are just mouths that will be empty again by morning.
"Because I wanted to see if I could still feel the difference," Ren whispered to the night.
"The difference between what?" the Goddess asked, her voice genuinely curious.
"Between being a savior and being a monster," Ren said.
He looked up at the violet sky. Somewhere out there, the Gods were drafting a law to delete him. In London, a Fool was collecting the hearts of angels, and in Tokyo, a woman was eating stale crackers and fearing the man who gave them to her.
Ren Hanshin didn’t feel like a Demigod. He just felt tired. He launched into the air, the shockwave of his takeoff shattering the remaining glass in the Ginza crossing. He didn’t fly toward the mountains. He flew toward the ocean. He needed the cold, the dark, and the silence of the deep. He needed to find a place where he didn’t have to be a King or a Tyrant, but as the wind whipped against his face, he knew there was no such place left.