1. 1094 Days Without a Single Incident

The fluorescent yellow lights buzzed with a pitch that was half high-pitched, half irritating against the white tiles of the store's floor, with an intensity that made everything look slightly sick.

Soren pushed another cup of ramen to the side of the shelf, one cup at a time, two fingers apart and labels facing forward, for the store had received precisely 47 boxes that very week, 47 boxes of humanity’s greatest achievement in the last eight hundred years. It wasn't the System, much less regulated magic, and it certainly wasn't the dimensional barriers that kept reality from unraveling every other Tuesday. But rather, his eighth wonder of the world: instant ramen ready in two minutes. His eyes shone with the simple act of organizing, and he was so dazzled by this delicacy that he was already considering getting the phrase tattooed.

In the center of the shelf was that void, the void caused by the existence of a divine flavor; sometimes it was the youth who devoured it, other times adults who bought 12 at once for the whole week, or else it was those drunks who remembered to take a break between whisky with ramen broth. That spot was waiting to receive more chicken ramen, the one that sold the fastest, the tastiest, and yes, Soren's favorite. On one hand, this annoyed him, because it was always the first to disappear, but on the other, it was a point of pride knowing that humanity actually had good taste.

Soren Vonesdar's night shift was an example of pure predictability. The floor smelled of lemon bleach—not just any aroma, it was an old aroma, as if the bleach had been aged in the plastic of the bottle itself. Also, somewhere on the ceiling, one of the lights flickered with the persistence of someone who should have already filed for retirement.

At this point, he no longer noticed it. He didn't notice the noise, nor that sickening nursing home smell, nor the aggressiveness with which the refrigerators made themselves known, much less the old coffee machine running yet another cleaning cycle because he had forgotten once again to stick a piece of paper on it saying it was out of order. All of that was part of his life; it was a perfectly banal life, until one day it wouldn't be.

Still kneeling by the boxes, he looked to his left, at the clock high on the back wall. That maddening battery-operated clock looked more like a shoebox.

2:47 AM.

There were 13 minutes left before he could justify a break. Not that he really needed that break, but it felt important to leave the tyrannical lights to argue with the noise of the ice cream freezers and beverage coolers. They were arguments that had lasted for years, only stopping when the power went out in the store; anyway, to this day, no one had won a thing.

The night shift stretched like chewing gum from midnight until the morning hustle began in the streets and the subway. Outside, the streetlamps shone all alone, making any cockroach that scurried past look like it was doing a stand-up comedy set for an audience of zero.

In the background, the sound of a mana-powered train could be heard pulling out of the station; the train catapulted its sound waves as if they were floating in slow motion toward the MinouseMart window, like a breath of spring through the forest. They were long, shapeless hours; Tokyo seemed to be sleeping, and Soren pretended to be insignificant, but in truth, neither could pass a lie detector unscathed.

Status Update

Presence suppression: [Active]

Suppression efficiency percentage: [94.2%]

User's mana circulation status: [Stable level]

Conclusion: [Insignificant]

This notification, which appeared in front of him, flickered in the periphery of his consciousness; it was a system readout that only he could observe. Insignificant.

He couldn't help but notice that, for three years, the System had treated him with this contempt. Soren had a lot of trouble adapting when he arrived in Tokyo; he would spend hours stewing over this insinuation, but as time passed and with the banality of his routine, the truth was, he was already used to this brazenness. Today, he looked at life differently, as this indirect jab from the System now sounded like a compliment to him.

Ding-Ding.

The door opened with the sound of a 1998 electric sensor. A man staggered in, tie loosened, carrying that breath of cheap whisky that mingled with the aroma of lemon bleach. Suddenly, a new fragrance settled into the store; the store's air freshener felt its own impotence and put up no fight at all.

A salaryman, in his late thirties, he was one of those men who had missed the train—perhaps not because he was late, but because he could no longer manage to buy a ticket at the automated machine. Catching the next train wasn't an option either, as he clearly preferred to wander from store to store until morning; the man couldn't even be bothered to call a taxi and go home.

“Cigarettes,” he said in his hoarse voice. “The blue ones,” he pronounced even louder. His voice was already so distorted that it clearly sounded like a new language, but Soren still understood what the man was asking for, even without subtitles.

Behind him, he opened the cigarette shelf and pulled out the pack, ran it over the scanner, and placed it in front of the man. “That’ll be 700 yen,” Soren said, fully believing the man wouldn't haggle over the price of a simple pack of cigarettes.

He took his wallet out of his pocket; it was so worn that if the store sold wallets, Soren would have considered making a suggestion. Then he fumbled with his coins and dropped one, which was left spinning on the floor. He hadn't even noticed, but Soren, ever polite, picked it up and placed it in front of the man on the counter—it was just another movement meant to breathe some air that wasn't ethyl alcohol. He shoved the pack into his jacket and left without a single word, not even a thank you. He walked out and slammed his shoulder loudly into the door. That must have hurt.

Soren stepped away from the counter and returned to the ramen shelf. He continued his restocking task and remembered what it was like to use his skills.

Today makes 1094 days that I have lived as if I hadn't reached max level.

It was clearly a new personal record. With a small smile directed at the ramen cups, he couldn't hide his contentment.

🍲

At 3:30 AM, suddenly, before the automatic door could open, a hand slammed against the glass with such force that it nearly shattered. It was a woman in her 30s. She rushed in with an accelerated pace, looking as though she were fleeing from something terribly dangerous; her eyes refused to see and her brain refused to process what was happening outside.

The woman was weeping in distress, her mascara already running down to her chin. Her tired voice only managed a few groans, and she breathed heavily after her zigzag sprint to find the nearest store:

“There's something out there!” the lady screamed in panic.

Soren carefully set down a cup of ramen he was holding and walked over to the window. Peering between the window frame hinges and the feeble street lighting, he leaned in and looked at the parking lot:

Fissure.

The name came to him before his analysis; it was actually a kind of instinct, his deepest intuition, older than the System and much older than any magic regulation in Tokyo, or anyone present in Japan for that matter. It just wasn't as old as what remained sealed inside his chest.

Two meters in diameter, Class B. That piece of reality situated between the parking lot and the garden behind it was tearing like wet paper. The edges flickered between totally distinct dimensions, and the light grew in jagged jolts. The sound arrived on a delay compared to the movements it produced, and the smell was altered; the garden trees and fast food were flooded with a taste of copper and something that had never been given a name in the Japanese language.

Outside, next to the fissure, a Toyota Corolla had just parked right before its appearance, with a couple in the front and a child in the back. The couple was around 40 years old, sharing the exact same look of terror and a completely paralyzed facial expression, with only one key difference: the driver had a few ice crystals on his mustache. In the back seat, the child kept her face pressed against the glass. The little girl was observant; she looked at the fissure, then shifted her gaze to the left and looked at the store. Only then did she spot Soren inside, and her lips began to move:

“Help us.”

Alert: [Dimensional Fissure Detected]

Classification: [Class B]

Threat level: [Moderate]

Adventurer level required: [Required, Adventurer party Level 50 or higher]

Estimated time for threat closure via Level 50+ Adventurer party: [10 to 15 minutes.]

Recommended action: [Evacuate the area]

Damn it!

It had been 1094 days without using a real power, three years of restocking ramen shelves—often zealously, with a nearly meditative precision. Three years in Tokyo returning the waves of drunks passing by on the street, pretending that the incessant notifications from the System were just another banal irritation of modern life, and not a cosmic joke that he found entirely unfunny.

He could report the incident to the responsible entity, the WID; the number was taped to the inside of the back door, right between a trash collection schedule and a microwave user manual. That organization had specialized Adventurer teams to respond to these kinds of anomalies; however, the estimated arrival time to the Shibuya district was lengthy—it would take around 15 to 20 minutes.

Outside, the fissure kept growing, while the family remained immobilized. Soren had to decide quickly; sure, he could make the call, but someone out there, terrified and out of control, might do something dangerous and draw the attention of whoever was on the other side of reality. Or maybe nothing would happen, at least nothing fatal.

The fissure pulsed with a loud bang, making the asphalt tremble, and widened noticeably by more than 100 centimeters. In the car, the little girl kept looking toward the store, and she moved her lips again.

“Please...”

Soren closed his eyes.

“Shit.”

He took off his red apron, folded it in four, and set it on the counter. “I'll be right back,” he told the woman, who was smeared with mascara and in disbelief at the clerk's calmness.

“If anyone comes in, tell them the coffee machine is out of order.” He left the store and walked out into the parking lot, acting as if he were just stepping out to check if he’d left his car headlights on.

The early morning air brushed his face; he stopped and felt how the air had turned colder and drier. It was then that he faced the fissure directly. Equipped with a pair of sneakers he had bought at a cheap sporting goods store when he first arrived in Tokyo, he walked step by step, scraping the worn soles against the asphalt of the main road.

The panic on the street shifted focus. As Soren approached, the couple's eyes moved with effort, possibly wondering who this fool approaching the anomaly could be, or perhaps even thinking that the storefront window was about to get a 'Help Wanted' sign for a night shift worker at MinouseMart.

“Sir, step away from that!” shouted a lady with a high-pitched voice, wearing pink pajamas, who was watching from the fourth floor of the building above the store.

Soren didn't return her gaze and simply kept walking.

He stopped five meters in front of the fissure. It was uglier up close—in fact, they all were. The sound of its movements arrived on an even longer delay, as if the world were buffering.

Slowly, he raised his hand in a single gesture, almost casual to anyone watching, as if he were simply brushing away a spider web that had gotten a little too close to his face.

Skill activated: [Reality Patch (Rank S)]

Skill effect: [Dimensional Fissure Closure (Class B)]

Usage cost: [Minimal (for the user)]

System note: [“Seriously?? How??”]