Sometimes The Light At The End Of The Tunnel Is An Oncoming Train [DxD / Celestial Dojo SI]

CHAPTER ONE: MONKEY SEE, MONKEY DO

It's easy to miss the scent of smoke when you're busy dealing with sewage coming out of your drains. That's the only explanation I can have for missing the fact that I was in a fictional universe for about two decades, but if you would forgive me for saying this, the smell of rot in Japan was very strong.

Not literally, to be exact — for the most part, even in my "hometown" of Shinjuku-ku, people were pretty fastidious about managing garbage. The public trash cans may have been removed after the sarin attacks by Aum Shinrikyo back in 1995, but that simply meant that people took their garbage home to dispose of it there. No, it was more of the fact that it was arguable that Japan had never recovered from the Lost Decade, and the popping of the Bubble Economy that had caused it, even well into 30 years afterward in my other life.

Ah, my other life? That probably deserves some explanation — I should probably introduce myself properly. My name's Aizome Haru, named for the season when I was given over to the orphanage, and gifted the family name by the nun who had apparently found me. In terms of likes and dislikes, dreams, and interesting facts, I like the color blue and dislike bitter melon, my dream before today was to be able to own an affordable home, and I have memories of a past life when there was a light novel series about a boy with a dragon encased in his left arm saved the world with the power of boobs.

The boy possibly had doomed the world to an extradimensional invasion through summoning the literal goddess of boobs, but one step at a time first, right?

---

The day I realized that I had significantly larger problems than praying that I wouldn't get employed by a black company when I graduated — or in fact, got employed at all, I had a strange dream that I faintly thought was Kung Fu Panda. Despite the film not coming out yet for at least couple more years, it was incredibly vivid, with the martial arts practiced by the animals seeming for some reason to my dream-self to be rather practical. Strange dreams were a dime a dozen to anyone though, so as I woke up to the chirping of birds outside and a pounding headache, I put it out of my mind. Rubbing my eyes with my left hand, I reached out with my right to my nightstand, flipping open my cell phone.

5:47. Too early to be happy about beating the alarm clock, but late enough that I didn't want to waste my time trying to fall asleep again only to have to get up at 7 to get to classes.

Putting on my glasses, the one thing that had followed me across universes, apparently, I fumbled around my room, getting ready for the day. It was a bare place, but given that I had moved in just a week or two ago, it wasn't the worst I could be. I had scrounged together enough home goods to make things livable, and frankly the room was small enough that additional furniture was out of the question. All things said, after folding up my futon and stowing it away, there was enough floor space to actually move about, which combined with a functional enough kitchen, was something to be thankful for. I hadn't experienced this kind of luxury in close to two decades, and as I prepared my relatively quick breakfast of a microwaved potato with toppings (don't knock it until you've tried it), I couldn't help but reminisce.

As much as the orphanage, or the "children's home," had tried its best and I was thankful for it, they had been desperately over capacity due to circumstances beyond their control. Despite what the term "orphanage" might typically bring up, most of the children stuck in homes weren't actually orphans these days — something like only one in ten were, the government caseworker I had asked about it in their last visit had told me. Maybe circumstances were different before "the times," but no, most children who were in my lovely second homeland's pleasantly euphemistic "alternative care" system had been placed there for their own safety. The reasons for it ranged vast and far, from domestic violence to parental drug abuse, but a steadily rising portion of them had been because their parents were no longer financially capable of taking care of them.

Some of them hadn't even been removed by the government — quite a few had been placed there by their parents, preemptively given up. A few were promised that they would be taken back one day. Fewer still were even visited by their parents. Any amount of frustration or resentment I could have had about being unfortunate enough to be reborn without a family had well and thoroughly died there — as overworked as the institution I had been in, they at least tried, which was far more than I could have hoped for, growing up in the aftershocks of the Bubble. It wasn't like I was ever going to be adopted, considering the circumstances — sometimes people would come by to pick up some of the children, but it was for transferring to another facility for one reason or another.

Given everything, my second childhood was mostly a blur. Wake up, go to school, help with chores, and study, study, study. Study to get into a good high school and college, study in order to get a good job, study in order to be a proper functional Japanese citizen. Being an orphan alone would have hurt my prospects — nepotism hire who? — but not getting into even a mid-tier college would have been murderous on my ability to get employed in a place where I could actually have a career.

Even obtaining a part-time job was a pretty difficult endeavor for me back in high school — because while ordinarily finding some kind of trivial job for pocket change wasn't that difficult, from what adults who had remembered what life was like before "the times" had told me, I wasn't just competing with my fellow teenagers who wanted to get some extra change to save up for some manga or a video game. No, I had been competing with entire generations of graduates who had no job offerings open to them, and had thus become "freeters." I was lucky enough to be able to swing a few positions through the help of the priests and nuns at the orphanage, and to be able to continue that into university, but—

—ah, the microwave had finished steaming the potato. It was time to eat and get going.

---

Despite all the issues of living in Tokyo, being able to move around wasn't that much of an issue. Being able to move from the center of Shinjuku-ku to Sophia University was about half an hour thanks to the wonders of being able to traverse city traffic with a bicycle. It would've been quicker if I took the subway, but recently the subways weren't feeling exactly safe and suicides involving the trains, politely known as "railway personal injury accidents" or less politely "human accidents" were up. So for the sake of my physical and mental health, as well as saving a miniscule amount of yen, I chose to keep on biking — I needed the cardio anyway. Like most things in this life, I bought it used for a couple of thousand yen. One of the middle-aged men at the local parish wanted to supposedly get rid of it because he was moving out to the country, and had basically given it away to me. It was a lightweight foldable one too, so it was beyond a steal, so I politely ignored the fact that a bike would get even more use out in the country and accepted it with a smile. What else could I do?

Sophia University wasn't something one would expect for someone who had examined my financial position, as since it was a frankly prestigious private research university, it would quite normally be something out of my reach. An orphan didn't exactly have the money to pay for juku — cram school, much less the tuition of a private university. While top tier universities like Tokyo Tech, or even worse one of the "Imperial Universities" like the University of Tokyo would've been absurd to even dream of, with the reorganization of Tokyo Metropolitan University I figured I would've had a good chance of getting in. It was one of my top choices in fact, and I had been preparing to set my savings ablaze and began working out the logistics of finding more part-time work to cover the costs, while hoping that I could somehow acquire a good enough scholarship.

However, even as subsidized as the public universities were, they couldn't compare to "free" — and while I didn't have many advantages in life beyond my previous life's memories, the one thing I did have was being raised in a Catholic orphanage, and Sophia University was a Catholic university. Apparently between my academics, scores on the entrance exam, and my background, I qualified for quite the scholarship, complete with a housing stipend. When the sisters at the orphanage presented me with the documents, I had just about burst into tears.

Despite my gratefulness, as I rode towards the University's grounds, I couldn't help but feel a little bit out of place. The University was built in Chiyoda-ku, and this place was ritzy as all get out. The Imperial Palace was placed at the Ward's center, and a significant portion of government institutions were here as well, and the place looked the part — if Tokyo was akin to New York City, then this place would be Manhattan, the financial and political center of the city.

Correspondingly, as soon as I had entered the Ward, the population density dropped significantly, making biking through the roads a relative breeze from what I had traversed earlier, and I took the opportunity to see the sights. If I had to wake up so early, I might as well make the most of it. Yotsuya was quite the urban neighborhood, but now that I was looking, I noticed there were an awful lot of animals going about. While stray dogs were incredibly rare due to rabies legislation, although I had seen a few, cats were walking all around, which kind of made the amount of birds singing in the area pretty unusual. I swore I had heard something about a lot of stray cats would always lead to a decimation of the population.

As I saw a cat leap to the top of a fence, an errant thought filled my mind—

"Huh, I could do that."

A quick series of images flickered through my head. I couldn't exactly replicate how a cat's 30 vertebrae coiled to provide the high speed velocity through the air, nor did I have the comparatively much larger plantaris muscle that cats had, and the square-cube law was a killer, but the unison of form in explosiveness was interesting as a thought exercise.

So interesting, in fact that I nearly ran a red light. Did I really spend that long on how to figure out how to jump like a cat…? The tyranny of biology and physics was eternal, and while I was fit, my conditioning wasn't exactly up to the task of a hands-free standing jump over a fence. Shaking my head and banishing any other thoughts of sightseeing, I focused on the trip to classes — it was still syllabus week, but being late to class so early, especially as a scholarship student, would be a terrible first impression.

---

Classes were as expected, a breeze — these were at most introductory university courses, the ones that in a past life I'd skipped over, and frankly even then things wouldn't get the ball rolling until after this week when introductions were finished. Unlike my previous life however, I actually did read the syllabi properly and resolved to actually make use of office hours. Aside from the academic benefits, connections were everything in this hell of a frozen economy, and being the student who actually showed up to office hours might actually give me a chance.

After sharing my email with my classmates, which had filled me with a touch of confusion back in high school because I could have sworn LINE was supposed to be the popular messaging app in Asia before realizing that this was probably before it was invented, I hopped onto my bike to head toward my first part-time job. However,as I headed out back to Yasukuni-dori, a pretty direct path between Shinjuku and Chiyoda, something else caught my eye. This time though, it wasn't the miracle of feline biomechanics. No, it was something much stranger — a group of people my age in clerical garments and habits were rushing off into the distance, led by someone who probably should have been a lot slower than them but somehow wasn't, albeit thankfully not in the same direction I was. Getting the strong feeling that I was seeing something that I wasn't supposed to, I mentally filed it away under the evergreen reasoning of not my monkeys, not my circus.

I probably should have paid more attention considering future events, in my defense, I didn't exactly have a great sense of overall precise directionality. While I knew my way around the city in the sense of how to get from Point A to Point B, I hadn't really charted out Chiyoda-ku in the context with my usual haunts just yet. If I did, I probably would've realized that they were heading off in the same direction as where I worked and maybe called off that day.

Actually no, I needed the money for groceries, so maybe not.

---

The great thing about working in a small family restaurant is that no one's using cocaine. Well, considering drug penalties were extremely severe in Japan, it was probably a lot less common compared to say, the States, but it was still a pretty big plus — I remember a friend of mine telling me about being offered a line by her sous chef, albeit she was Canadian. That didn't mean there was no drug use though, just ones a whole lot less verboten to the public. One of the many things people got blinded by nostalgia for the 2000s forgot was that people just smoked so damn much, and a "smoking section" only split off from the rest of the restaurant by a plexiglass divider was both a joke and sadly common.

Still, the pay was acceptable, and "family meal," such as it was, was fantastic — free food forgave a lot of sins, and the cook, my boss Sakamoto-san made a killer chicken katsu curry. So good that it quieted the buzzing in my brain enough that I almost forgot how off the day had been until my shift ended, when he stopped to talk to me before I left.

"Ah, Aizome-kun, one moment," he called out, his voice strangely not quite as jovial as it usually was, which was pretty strange. There weren't as many customers as usual around, but it was also pretty late in the evening — we weren't that close to Shinjuku Station, but we still had a pretty nasty dinner rush. "I've got something for you, but I forgot to give it to you earlier."

"Something for me?" I responded, a bit bewildered. I finished putting away the plates I was drying off and wiped my hands. "What do you mean? Did I forget something here at my last shift?"

"Oh, nothing like that," he answered. To my confusion, he pulled out an embroidered silk pouch. An omamori…? "It's actually not something from me, but one of the miko from the local shrine had actually come by here during lunch asking if we could hand these out to anyone who worked late. Didn't give much of an explanation, but at least it looks nice, doesn't it?"

"Well, um, thank you. It definitely does," I replied bemusedly as I accepted the talisman. I wasn't lying either, it almost felt like it was handmade compared to the typical omamori I saw prepared for tourists at gift shops or the like. It felt kind of heavy too, which made me curious, but I chose not to satisfy it — you weren't supposed to open the pouches, or else you would "release" the spiritual power. "Specifically for anyone who worked late, huh? Has there been anything going on here when it's that late…?"

It was kind of a stupid question — this was Shinjuku. We weren't exactly in red-light district Kabukicho, I wasn't that desperate for work that I'd spend any more time around the yakuza than I'd have to, but it wasn't like we were far away from it either. Still, for a miko to drop by around here in this time of the year and for that specific purpose made me feel that this wasn't some kind of advertisement, especially with a talisman this nice. Setsubun was a couple of weeks ago, and while Golden Week was going to be in a few more, the timing felt off.

My boss only responded with a shrug. "Nothing beyond the usual, you know? People move in, people move out, there's been a lot of new faces, but that's all."

The city government had been making a pretty strong push to make housing more affordable and available, it was one of the few reasons I could actually afford my own apartment, however cramped. Still, something felt off about the situation. That being said, it wasn't like there was much I could do with a feeling as vague as that.
"Well, at least that's good for business, no?" I said, mentally shrugging. I tied the talisman to my bag and put it on.

He chuckled. "That's right, that's right. See you tomorrow, Aizome-kun. Good night."

"Good night, Sakamoto-san," I replied with a smile, and left the warmth and the light of the restaurant to pedal into the neon-lit chiaroscuro of Shinjuku.

---

The thing about supernatural events, or most natural disasters in fact, is that most people who aren't horror movie victims don't tend to seek them out. We rather like to avoid them, in fact! When someone hears a weird noise, or sees a strange shape, or even has the hair raise on their neck for no particular reason, they rightfully want to get the fuck out of there, and the same went for me when I noticed the lights flickering out as I pedaled down the alleys back to my apartment.

Unfortunately for me, by the time you see something going wrong, it's typically too late to cleanly escape.

"I l-l-loooove you d-d-daaaaaarling…"

A cold gust of wind was the only warning I had to swerve hard left. Years of handling Tokyo traffic saved my second life as an amorphous mass sped downhill on my right, overshooting my position considerably. Slamming hard on my brakes, the dust settled as I came to a stop, giving me a fantastic view of what had almost killed me.

"Nope, nope, nope!" I immediately began backing away, trying to run back up the hill with the bike in tow so I could hit the flat road past.

What greeted my eyes appeared to be nothing else but a monster. As the lights continued to flicker and fade, the ghostly glow of the creature made its form more and more visible — a crouching, humanoid figure. Clothed in tattered rags that resembled a business suit, the ghost rocked back and forth like it was talking to itself. Tragically for both it and myself, it seemed that it wasn't satisfied with itself as company, and turned around to leap at me.

"W-w-where are you d-d-daaaaaarling…!"

With a feat of strength I didn't know I had, I immediately hurled my bike at the ghost. Unfortunately for me, it was a ghost, and so my precious 21-speed sailed right through the ectoplasm or whatever the hell made up the creature's body. Cursing under my breath, I fell flat like a cat, the ghost sailing over me like a sugar glider on crack.

Getting up with an ease I absolutely didn't have a day ago, I got a look at the beast's front now. Hearteningly, it didn't look like it was doing well — it appeared the facsimile of a suit it wore was in tatters for a reason. While its back seemed to be unharmed from a distance, its front wasn't so lucky, covered in slash wounds and pockmarked with burns. One of its limbs oddly from its side, with a few of its fingers appearing to be missing. Most importantly, half of its "face" appeared to be gone, the mask severed in half neatly, leaving only half of a depiction of a person's face in anguish painted on snow-white bone.

Not so hearteningly, however, was the cavernous void of its face, now visible due to its facial disfigurement, and the fact that wounded as it was, it was still preparing to attack me. Typically, predators are not the brave, bold rulers of the wild so commonly depicted in fiction. No, they're cowards, or at least — as they hunted for their food, they had to measure the cost of actually engaging with the hunt with whatever reserves of energy they had, as well as the risks of a failed hunt. A single wound could potentially lead to death — it wasn't like wild animals or ghosts had antibiotics to deal with infections. Or at least I hoped they didn't.

What that meant, of course, was that down one limb, half its face, and covered in wounds, the beast in front of me thought that it had a close to 100% chance of success in eating me, or was so desperate for food to recover that it was willing to spend itself entirely to kill me, and considering how fast it was, I gave the beast top marks on its mathematical skills. I probably wouldn't be able to run or hide.

The thing about a prey animal, in contrast to a predator, is that in a fight, it doesn't give a fuck. If it loses, it doesn't lose out on a meal. It loses out on a being able to actually live. If a predator is a coward, then prey must be courageous, for if it cannot run or hide, then it had only one option, the same option that was left to me.

"Hah… what a pain in the ass." I dropped my bag, but not before palming a certain pouch. I might be raised by a bunch of nuns, but that miko must have been passing around these for this reason, right? It's not like I had any better choices. "Well, it is what it is."

You know what though — a prayer to St. Michael wouldn't hurt either, might as well. Would be a bit of a waste memorizing all of those prayers at the pain of a ruler on my knuckles if I didn't use them when an actual evil spirit showed up in front of me. St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle—

Fight.

---

It was like a demented game of battleship, except that both of us could see each other in this shadowed alley. It tried to predict where I would be. I would try to predict where it would leap. Unfortunately, I had to be right every single time. It, on the other hand, only had to land in the right spot once before I went splat.

Well, it wasn't like I was every a graceful loser at board game night, anyhow.

"D-D-D-AAAARLIIIIIING!!"

The beast crashed into the wall where I was, wailing louder and louder, as was its wont. I coughed from the dust as I rolled away and kipped up, the now familiar event raising even more questions. Why did the ghost actually have physical damage landing into the wall, but my bike phase through? More importantly, where the fuck was everyone? Anyone? Was no one hearing the noise from this thing tearing up the street? More importantly where the hell were the people that hurt this thing so bad?

"I'M HOOOOOOOME, DAAAAAAAAARLING!!"

I jumped to the side again, my hands grasping a pole and flinging myself further down the street. Maybe it was for the best I had stared at those cats so long this morning, because the ideas I had bullshitted from watching them were the only things keeping me alive.

Moving with catlike grace, I worked my way to another area the ghost hadn't quite wrecked yet. Time was ticking down for the both of us. On one hand, my mobility rather relied on clear and easy traversal for a human, whilst the beast was doing just fine jumping through rubble. On the other, this goddamn hungry ghost was making so much noise that someone would hear it eventually, and in the meantime hopefully expending a shitload of energy with its wounds.

—but if it was burning energy, so was I. This demented game of cat and mouse had been going on for a while, and I didn't know how much longer it would go. How long I could go. There was a limited amount of space I could go to, and the ghost was intelligent enough that it knew that too. Realistically speaking, I had, one or two more evasive maneuvers I could execute.

Which meant it was now or never.

I clambered up the wall, my fingers and limbs channeling the ability for cats to walk on the smallest ledge. Carefully making my way up, I positioned myself carefully in order to carry out the stupidest plan possible. Taking the omamori out of my palm, I carefully wrapped it around my knuckles.

Right on time, the beast emerged. But this time, it looked different. Its wounds remained, one of its limbs remained crippled, but its mask… its mask had changed. The face it depicted was no longer anguished — instead, it was smiling.

Was it strong enough to kill me from the start, and was it no longer playing cat or mouse? Or was it like I hoped, and finally happy that I had grown desperate enough to climb up — up enough that I wouldn't be able to evade it like I had, as I couldn't push off things in the air?

It didn't matter. Either way, it was time to finish things.

"THERE YOU ARE, DARLING!!"

It leapt. I jumped.

It opened its mouth. I swung my fist.

And as the omamori made contact with the bone of its mask, something, somehow, unwound in my heart, my mind, my soul, and everything became so very, very, bright—

---

For an eternity and a moment, I dreamed. And as I dreamed, I bore witness. I was taught and learned. And so I became—.

I was a boy, learning how to fight from my father—

I was a man, crawling like a dog to move faster and faster—

I was a Saint — King — Emperor

I was the North God, cutting down the Demon King with my comrades—

I was the North God, cutting down the Dragon King with Incurable Wounds—

I was the North God, cutting down the Dead End with Kajakut—

—Aizome Haru, the newest practitioner of North God Style. And like those who came before me, I would be victorious, no matter what.

---

I came to, and I saw my enemy before me.

"...d-d-darling?"

I walked over to the beast, and saw that its had been further broken, leaving only what was its "mouth" still intact. Somehow, that was enough for it to still speak.

"W-w-why can't I s-s-see you?"

That didn't matter though. What did matter was that it couldn't see me, and hadn't heard me either as I walked over with catlike steps.

"I-i-it hurts. It wasn't supposed to h-h-hurt-"

I gathered my newly unlocked Battle Aura, and grasped victory.