The sun had begun its final descent, painting the sky in hues of amber and violet. The brutal, direct assault of the summer sun had ended, but its legacy remained—a thick, clinging humidity that wrapped around the city like a damp blanket.
Kuroha Akira, drenched in the day's accumulated sweat, felt a sticky, grimy film over his skin. The only thought in his mind was the sweet, liberating promise of a shower.
His journey home, however, was a gauntlet. His current lodging was a solid hour's walk from the school. He owned no bicycle, and the meager coins in his pocket—what little was left after the vending machine's mercy—were nowhere near enough for train fare. The path of least resistance was, quite literally, the path of most resistance: the long walk back.
He wanted to complain, really. But a deeper, more pragmatic part of him acknowledged the facts. Having a roof over his head at all was, in his current context, a stroke of immense fortune.
One must understand: when Kuroha Akira first transmigrated, he wasn't just a linguistic blank slate with an unknown name. He was, for all intents and purposes, a ghost with a backpack. Homelessness had been his starting line. It was, without exaggeration, a 'Hell Difficulty' opening.
Recalling those first disorienting hours in this world, a wave of complex nostalgia washed over him.
In his past life, Kuroha Akira had been a copywriter and planner for a middling game company. His final memory was of a late, late night—or perhaps an early, early morning—the eve of a major game launch.
He was at his desk, body pushed to its limits, mind a foggy haze, sustained only by the flickering hope of post-launch liberation. Just get through this, he'd thought, and the endless 10 PM clock-outs will end. Weekends will be mine again.
A strange, rhythmic throbbing had pulsed behind his eyes, as if his brain itself was trembling from exhaustion. His eyelids grew unbearably heavy.
Just a short nap, he decided. Just a few minutes to reset.
He never imagined that closing his eyes would be his final farewell to that world. The liberation he'd craved arrived in the most ironic form possible: falling asleep and never waking up. A classic, tragically mundane office drone's demise. 'Karōshi'—death from overwork—had always been a distant, abstract news headline until it became his personal epilogue.
Then came the 'blessing,' in the most unexpected of wrappings. He'd always thought transmigration was a convenient plot device reserved for light novels and web serials. Until it happened to him.
He opened his eyes to find himself in a sun-drenched classroom, seated in the iconic protagonist's seat—second to last row, by the window. At first, he thought it was a hyper-realistic dream of returned youth. But the uniform felt wrong—a crisp, black Western-style blazer, not the nostalgic blue-and-white track suit of his memory. Turning his head, he saw cherry blossom petals drifting past the window in a gentle breeze.
…Huh?
A series of increasingly desperate attempts to 'wake up'—pinching, slapping, holding his breath—only confirmed the terrifying, exhilarating truth. He had encountered the legendary isekai transition… or had he?
A trip to the bathroom and a long stare into the mirror left him even more confused. This wasn't a case of 'becoming someone else.' It was a strange, hybrid state. The body was… his. The face in the reflection was unmistakably his own. No flood of foreign memories invaded his mind.
To be precise, his body had changed. It had regressed. The dark circles etched by countless late nights were gone. The faint acne scars from a long-past puberty had vanished. His frame felt lighter, leaner, as if thirty pounds of 'overwork obesity' had been magically shed. The sedentary bulk and nascent double chin from his corporate life were erased.
Most startlingly, the small, pale scar at the corner of his left eye—a souvenir from a childhood encounter with broken glass—remained. A scar that wasn't a birthmark, that had grown with him. Its presence was profoundly confusing. Did an identical accident happen in this timeline? What was this? Transmigration? Rebirth? Quantum body-swap?
Only the gods, who were conspicuously silent, knew.
He quickly abandoned the unanswerable metaphysical questions. He was here. The priority was gathering intel on 'Kuroha Akira, Present Model.'
Since no smug deity appeared to deliver an info-dump, and no glowing system interface popped up with a tutorial, it meant he was on his own.
Silver lining? He was free from that black-hearted company. And he got to be young again, in his own skin.
Alright then, he'd thought, a flicker of grim determination igniting. Time to re-live youth. Let's do this.
Then came the soul-crushing, atmosphere-freezing minute of his self-introduction, which effectively torpedoed his social life on day one. The one saving grace was that it confirmed his new identity.
Kuroha Akira.
The name itself was a cosmic joke. His previous surname was Bai (白), his given name Yuming (宇明). Now, his surname was Kuroha (黒羽)—'Black Feather'—and his given name was simply Akira (明). The characters had flipped, the pronunciation entirely different. Yet the echo was there. For weeks, he'd accidentally write '白' (Bai) instead of '黒羽' (Kuroha) and fumble the spacing, habits of a past life clinging on.
After the final bell on that first day, a more immediate and terrifying problem surfaced.
He had no idea where 'home' was.
Swallowing his pride and what little dignity he had left, he approached Kobayakawa-sensei. Through a painful combination of broken Japanese, universal hand gestures, and desperate miming, he conveyed his predicament: Lost. No home. Help.
The kind-hearted teacher, concerned for her seemingly traumatized, mute-ish new student, checked the class registry. Kuroha Akira's address and contact fields were blank. Thinking it an oversight, she called the school administration, only to receive a baffling reply:
"Ah, Kuroha Akira-kun? He's an out-of-town enrollee. My understanding is he's still in the process of securing lodging. Once he has a fixed address, we'll have him update his information."
So, he wasn't homeless. He was pre-homed. A distinction without a practical difference when the sun was setting.
Kuroha Akira didn't catch all the words at the time, but he perfectly understood the meaning of "Sonna…" and the deeply troubled look on Kobayakawa-sensei's face.
A search of his school bag later yielded a single bank card—likely his 'living expenses' stipend from whatever family arrangement existed in this world.
But.
He didn't know the PIN.
It's bad enough you didn't pre-load the language pack, but you couldn't even leave me the banking password?! Baka! Baka! His internal rant, limited by his then-meager vocabulary, cycled futilely between the only satisfying curse word he knew.
Meanwhile, Kobayakawa-sensei was wrestling with her own dilemma. Her heart ached for this isolated, struggling boy. But what could she do? Invite a male high school student to live with her? The potential for scandal, the whispers of forbidden teacher-student romance…
Her own inexperience and romantic fantasies spun a brief, dramatic scenario before reality crashed down. No. Impossible. As a new teacher, such an act would be career suicide.
In the end, with profound regret, she had to convey she was powerless.
And so, as twilight deepened over Tokyo, Kuroha Akira shouldered his bag and stepped out of the school gates—not towards a home, but into the vast, indifferent labyrinth of the city. His great wandering had begun.