Later, the scene transitions to a campfire surrounded by multiple lit nterns.
“Does it really have to be that bright in here? There’s no way I can sleep!” the girl excims.
The Old Man sighs, “Listen, the Ju Setai has a guy who’s oddly in love with shadows. Trust me, we need it this way. Also, we’re supposed to watch over the kid—WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO SLEEP?!”
Suddenly, the teen stirs, blinking blearily.
“He’s awake!!!” the girl shrieks.
The teen groans, his head spinning. “What the hell happened to me… and where are we?”
Before anyone can answer, a sharp ringing tears through his skull—loud, endless, suffocating.
His vision warps. Then—fragments of a memory not his own.
A cape hangs from a wall. The word Ancient stitched boldly into the fabric. A man sits at a desk, staring at nothing. The teen gasps, clutching his head. The ringing intensifies. His entire body burns from the inside out. The world is too loud. The pressure is too much. Then—he screams.
The Old Man immediately grips his shoulders, steadying him. “Kid, breathe.” His voice is firm but calm. The teen sucks in air, gasping.
His hands tremble as he digs his fingers into his temples, trying to drown out the lingering echo of the voice. “What—what the hell was that?! What’s happening to me?!”
The Old Man exhales slowly, removing the cigarette from his lips. “Yeah… figured this might happen.”
The teen snaps his head up, eyes wild. “Figured what might happen?! Are you saying this is normal?! Because I’m pretty sure hearing voices and seeing weird-ass memories ISN’T NORMAL.”
The girl, who had been watching unimpressed, leans back against a nearby crate. “You didn’t think awakening power would be painless, did you? Still it is weird you didn’t experience the full blunt of this during activation.” she says dryly.
The teen gres at her. “Oh yeah, I’m sorry, I totally should’ve expected mysterious headaches and ghostly visions as part of my day. Geez, you’re lucky you’re pretty.”
“And you’re lucky you’re alive idiot.”
“Hey now, I thought you guys trying to kill me, was a yesterday thing.”
The Old man pinches the bridge of his nose. “For god’s sake, both of you shut up.”
He plops down in front of the teen, elbows resting on his knees. “Alright, kid. Listen close, because I’m only expining this once.”
The teen is still shaken, but the man’s serious tone forces him to focus.
“You just awakened your Tamashkii. It’s your soul energy—the thing inside you that lets you interact with the In-Between—the pne between life and death.”
The teen blinks slowly. “…The what now?”
The old man exhales sharply, rubbing his temples. “Right. You wouldn’t know this. Look, there are two realms we exist in now.” He holds up two fingers.
“First, there’s Earth—normal, everyday life, where normal people don’t see anything supernatural. Then, there’s the In-Between (Chūkan Yūrei)—the world only Tamashkii users can perceive. Once your core awakened, your soul got dragged into both.”
The teen stares at him. “…So what you’re saying is… I’m half-ghost now?”
The Old Man sighs, clearly regretting all of his life choices. “No, dumbass. You’re still alive. But your soul now exists in a state between the two realms. It’s why you saw things that weren’t yours—because the In-Between holds the lingering echoes of all Tamashkii users.”
The teen slowly processes this. “So… what I saw just now…”
The Old Man nods. “Yeah. That wasn’t your memory. That was someone else’s.”
A tense silence follows.
The teen’s chest tightens. “Then whose memory was it?”
The Old Man takes another slow drag of his cigarette, watching him carefully. “You tell me, kid.”
The teen’s breath hitches. That image… that cape… the presence behind the voice. He doesn’t know, but… “…Ancient.”
The Old Man’s eyes widen slightly, a flicker of recognition in his gaze. “Hmph.” He lets out a sharp breath. “So you really did see him.”
The teen stiffens. “Wait—you know who that was?”
The Old Man leans back slightly. “Yeah, kid. And if you really saw him… well, looks like your energy’s already more interesting than I thought.”
The teen grits his teeth. Then, we see the memory:
The hero himself sits at a desk facing the wall.
“I talked to a high school girl today,”
the memory intones in the hero’s voice.
“Apparently, she’s been bullied relentlessly after school. I asked how I could help—and she said she didn’t need it. Crazy, huh?
Telling the ‘ancient hero’ that you don’t need help. I’ve saved hundreds, no, thousands, yet I’ve never heard that before.”
The hero begins to ugh, then reflects, “Does a true hero help those who refuse help? Or is it merely selfish? (Long pause)
No—I don’t need the answer to that. I’ll just continue to don the cape as I always have. It’s all I can do. The memory fades.
“So who is Ancient?” the teen asks.
Taking a deep inhale, he remarks, “I guess kids these days wouldn’t know him; he’s kind of everywhere now.”
He pauses, then continues, “Ancient was the name of the very first “hero”. Tamashkii flowed through him better than anyone else—technically, all the heroes you see today are just cheap imitations.”
Both the teen and the girl stare at him, stunned. Their silence deepens, heavy with unspoken understanding. Realizing they’re lost in these old tales, the Old Man throws more wood onto the fire and heaves a hefty sigh.
“I suppose I have to start from the top.” The old man continues, his voice steady.
“Ancient first showed up on Earth sixty years ago. Rumor has it his first heroic feat was saving the pnet from a world-ending asteroid—he flew from Japan into space and then crash-nded in America.”
The teen and the girl exchange a look. Then, in unison: “He sounds cool.” Their eyes sparkle like entranced children watching their first action movie.
The old man sighs. “Oh great. Now I’ve lost you both.”
Still caught in their awe, the girl hums, tilting her head. “So, if he flew into space, that means he could breathe up there, right?”
The teen smirks. “Okay, so this guy wasn’t just strong—he was basically Superman but with extra steps.”
The old man rubs his temples. “This is exactly why kids don’t know their history.”
After a short comedic pause he continues,
“But after that, the US took him and ran a battery of tests on him. Japan, however, saw him as their property—and naturally, the countries began to bicker.
It turned out Ancient was just traveling the world, training wherever he could. When they finally realized that, the countries agreed to share him.
But Ancient made it clear: he intended to save the whole world, not just America and Japan. Wherever crime or danger lurked, he was always there to stop it.”
The girl interjects, “Then what happened to him? He sounds way too OP to have been killed in a battle!”
The teen adds, “Well duh, he clearly got too old and withered to ash.”
Anger fres in the girl’s eyes as she retorts, “That doesn’t happen in real life, idiot!”
“Who are you calling an idiot?” snaps the teen.
The two unch into a childish standoff, voices rising—until the Old Man’s next words leave them both stunned:
“He was assassinated.”
A painful look crosses the Old Man’s face as he pauses. “It was never made public but…….. someone activated a tamashkii core for him—and we guess since his tamashkii flow was already perfect, the overflow of energy obliterated him.”
The Old Man grits his teeth and turns away.
The girl then raised a look of suspicion. “Wait, if it wasn’t made public… who covered it up? This dude dying sounds like it’d be everywhere news”, she said.
The Old Man paused for a second, maybe a second too long, then his fingers twitched. As he was about to speak, the teen frantically jumped up touching his own body.
“Does that mean I’m gonna blow up?! You put a bomb inside me?!” he shrieks.
The girl quickly pces a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, calm down—you didn’t even know what tamashkii was until a few hours ago. There’s no way it can be honed as perfectly as Ancient’s.”
After a moment of thought, the teen asks, “Wait—if he died from one of these core thingies, then why are you all so comfortable being around them?” the teen asks, concern and confusion mingling in his voice.
The girl shrugs. “I’m just learning about this, like you. When my sensei activated my core, he never mentioned any danger.”
The Old Man sms his fist against the wall. “That’s because these cores aren’t some random invention—they were created by the Musabori’s leader.
But don’t be fooled—Kuroda designed these things for evil. I don’t know how but I do know it was him. Somehow, our leader managed to twist their use for good. Now, they power our people instead of bringing ruin.”
He pauses, his voice heavy with regret.
“There are reasons I activated the core that even I still struggle to understand.”
At the mention of Kuroda’s name, the girl’s eyes widen. A quick fsh of her memory flickers across the scene:
she’s a small child, her face bloodstained as she peeks through a cracked door. On the back of that door, a tarnished namepte boldly reads “Kuroda,” marking the entrance to his secret b.
The Old Man takes a deep breath. “I know it’s hard to swallow, but that’s our reality.
Everything we know about these cores comes with a legacy of darkness—and a spark of hope that was born from it. “I’m sorry—it was wrong of me to sh out at you.
You had nothing to do with it, and I knew that.” He sits by the fire, the fmes dancing in the quiet night.
He continues, “My name’s Ren. I am—well, I guess I was—the commander of the Replenishers(Hoju).
Not something I signed up for, but with these organizations, you rarely get a choice. Ain’t that right, girlie?”
He nods in the direction of the girl, who simply shrugs with a stern “Hmph!” The teen then sits beside Ren.
“I’m Watari. I’m not with an organization, but I am part of the best orphanage in the city!” he announces with a smile.
Ren smirks. “Nice to meet you, Watari.”
The girl, who had been putting up a tsundere act, reluctantly sits next to Watari. Gncing away before softly murmuring, “My name is Yumi—but you can call me Yu-chan.” A blush creeps over her as she turns back to Watari.
With an idiotic grin, Watari says, “Nice to meet you, Mi-chan.” After a short pause, Ren bursts into ughter.
The scene slowly shifts as the two men ugh, while Yumi scolds them for ughing at her.
