Tokyo Trickster

Tokyo Trickster Author: Kita Mochizuki

between:

"Your twisted desires will be fulfilled by... ah, sorry, I'm past the age of chuuni."

- Amamiya Ren, Joker, leader of the Phantom Thieves of the Mind, "the best Glock user in the world", "Ten-Ship Jumper" Menkyo Kaiden, the arcade commander of Ginza Game City, a master of shogi, a regular customer of the maid cafe, the golden mediator of family disputes, the savior of the mahjong club and the e-sports club, the fierce dancing king of Shibuya and Yokenjaya, whose dream is to travel around the world.

He studied under Bei Mu Ni Shu and was forced to leave for Tokyo, where he enrolled as a first-year student at the private Shujin Academy.

Before the story began, he didn't actually have any great goals...except wanting to get the title of the world's number one hunter in "APEX".

(Those who don't know the tags can read the original version of the day, which has no reading threshold. A combination of anime and Persona 5 fanfiction.)

The weather is dry: 001. Bringing justice to justice (4K)

“Only parrots chatter, but they can never fly high. Creation is the highest expression of the human spirit and the source of joy and happiness.”

——Wright Brothers, the father of world aviation.

For a child growing up in the countryside, riding on an airplane was a rare and surprising experience.

Along with the rumbling, the scene outside the porthole changed from slow to fast. In the rapid tremor like rain hitting duckweed, I could clearly feel my body gradually getting rid of the shackles of gravity, and then I heard a thunder. Centuries of human wisdom and hard work intertwined in the engine, symbolizing the prosperity of modern society. The air gushed, and the steel behemoth stretched its wings, and rushed into the dark blue sky under the guidance of the indicator light in the distance.

"Dear passengers, this flight will go to Tokyo..." It was faintly heard on the radio, probably just an illusion caused by sleepiness.

The ceiling lights in the cabin were turned off, leaving only the service lights on the seats glowing dimly. Everything was dim and hazy. The men and women who bought tickets for the late-night ride in order to save money were inevitably drowsy.

The passenger, who looked particularly young compared to the people around him, looked toward the porthole with the sunshade opened. Outside the window was a pale sea of ​​clouds. Below was the sea of ​​clouds, and above was the endless night, stretching the dark and deep light to the end of his sight.

He yawned, rubbed his tearful eyes, and took a nap in the soft chair. The dim moonlight shone through the porthole onto the thin curtains. The thick canvas bag was held in the arms of the passenger, and his slender shadow merged into the darkness of the cabin.

The plane had entered the stratosphere at some point, and a flight attendant pushed a cart full of food and beverages past one end of the corridor. Suddenly, the lights in the cabin came on, instantly dispelling the darkness.

The light, the lonely light shone on the boy's face.

It's like a powerful flashlight in an interrogation room.

It makes people subconsciously close their eyes and shrink back to avoid it.

"Name?" The square-faced police officer asked in a heavy tone. Asking for basic identity information was a common technique used during interrogations to gain the initiative and increase the prisoner's obedience.

"Amamiya Ren." The boy whispered. His hands were handcuffed behind his back, and the school badge on his collar showed that he was a high school student at the nearby Naoetsu High School.

This time, Amemiya Ren was not wearing the pair of plain glasses that she always carried with her. There were many bruises on her face, and the right corner of her mouth was red and swollen, with blood oozing out.

"Age?" the police officer continued to ask questions.

"I'm 16 years old and a first-year student at Naoetsu High School." Amamiya Ren looked at him calmly. "I think we can skip this meaningless Q&A, Mr. Matsumoto."

The police officer named Matsumoto glanced at the camera in the corner of the interrogation room without leaving a trace. "What do you want to say?"

"I plead guilty." Amamiya Ren said frankly.

Police Officer Matsumoto frowned his thick, short eyebrows and turned down the corners of his mouth. He was not happy about the new addition to his resume, and there was a hint of helplessness and anger in his expression.

"Charges without solid evidence will not be recognized by the law." He glanced at the camera again and spoke earnestly.

Amamiya Ren shook her head at him and said nothing.

The policeman was also speechless, and the two of them remained silent until an overwhelming feeling of powerlessness engulfed this narrow space, and they couldn't help feeling unspeakable indignation and disappointment.

He and Amamiya Ren were familiar with each other, or rather, most people in the Metropolitan Police Department knew this strange student. A few years ago, Amamiya Ren was accidentally involved in a dispute between a classmate's family and a cult on his way home from school. After a day and a night of near-death experience, with the help of an anonymous passerby, he assisted the police in dismantling the entire cult in Naoetsu. This experience was also artistically processed by him and turned into a suspense novel, which caused quite a stir in Japan after being published by a publishing house.

But tonight, this boy who was praised and well-received by the public was arrested on suspicion of obstructing government officials, intentional injury, intimidation and other crimes. The Internet has begun to spread rumors that the so-called genius writer has serious violent tendencies and antisocial personality.

Those in the know all understand that this is nothing but a slanderous crime fabricated out of thin air, but they have to acknowledge these fictitious facts as the truth and cannot conduct any further investigation, exploration, or even overturn the verdict.

It was a yellow street lamp, and in the swaying shadows, Amamiya Ren stopped a drunk man from harassing a passing woman. This should have been a just act worthy of praise, but unfortunately, the instigator was a government councillor who has been in the limelight recently and has a strong background. With Amamiya Ren's influence as a "genius novelist", he would not have ended up in jail, but it seems that the cult gang took the opportunity to add insult to injury, and under the manipulation of overt and covert means, he turned "heroic acts" into "malicious crimes."

Matsumoto looked at Amamiya Ren deeply, and finally felt helpless, "Sorry."

He bowed his head towards Amamiya Ren, clenching his fists tightly, "I know this is unfair to you, but..."

"Matsumoto!" The door of the deliberation room was smashed open and a middle-aged man shouted loudly, interrupting the conversation that was about to cause disaster.

Matsumoto then looked at the surveillance camera again and saw that the infrared camera with a flickering red light was aimed at him.

"Yes, Minister Araragi," Matsumoto said, feeling dejected as if he had been defeated by an invisible enemy.

"Come out," Araragi called his subordinates out of the deliberation room, "The ruling has been passed down from above."

The heavy door closed, and Amamiya Ren raised his head, and with great pain, he grinned at the surveillance camera with an ugly and somewhat ferocious smile. All the injuries on his body were caused by the beatings of the congressman's bodyguard.

I seem to have forgotten to ask Mr. Matsumoto to help me put on my glasses... Never mind, that lunatic shouldn't run out so soon.

"I know it's hard for you to accept, and so is it for me." Minister Araragi continued to say to Matsumoto.

"I have done my best to protect him, this is the best result I can get..."

The footsteps and conversation outside the door gradually faded away.

Under the lonely light sat a lonely boy. He was all alone, with his back stretched out long, and the light seemed distant from him, just like the bright stage and the dark backstage of a Noh performance, where the interweaving of light and darkness quietly divided the two worlds.

Waking up from the dream in a trance, Amamiya Ren subconsciously tilted her head to look out the window. The moonlight flowed into the cabin, as clear as a knife placed on crystal ice, cold and chilling. The plane had already begun to land.

The stars shone brightly, and for a moment, they obscured the clarity of the moonlight. It was the Milky Way, which was even more desolate than the moonlight. It rushed from the end of the earth, and flowed upstream along the horizon as if to embrace the entire sky and return to the distant and boundless universe. Then the Milky Way passed by Amamiya Ren and fell into nothingness.

He suddenly shuddered. There was no Milky Way here, only the brilliant neon lights of Tokyo.

The city of Tokyo was bathed in the late spring evening breeze, with countless red, green and yellow headlights sneering and "welcoming criminals".

Amamiya Ren lowered his head. In his coat pocket was his academic record. The first page of the document was stamped with the words "protective observation", which meant that he would be under police surveillance for the next year.

Observational punishment... No wonder those guys in school avoid me like the plague.

He wanted to laugh at himself, to recite a haiku with a chic mood loudly, or to dance a tap dance popular in the streets of the United States in the 20th century on the corridor. But such a mood soon disappeared. The plain glasses reflected a faint rainbow light, and the porthole reflected the eyes of Amamiya Ren indistinctly.

I am just a quiet, low-key, ordinary high school student. I will and must be afraid of many things, worrying about life, worrying about studies, fearing the law and evil people.

A voice kept repeating this sentence in his heart, and the madness in his eyes slowly subsided.

Be as inconspicuous as possible, think about the consequences, and be considerate of the environment.

My tolerance for error is very low.

Amamiya Ren took a deep breath, pushed her glasses further down her nose, and looked calmly at herself in the porthole.

This blurred reflection was not wearing glasses, and he was grinning, his pale cheeks seemed to be painted. He was smiling, and his smile was developing towards madness, until the corners of his mouth were torn open, and blood flowed out.

"Amamiya Ren" licked her scarlet lips, her eyes filled with sarcasm.

Faintly, the voice seemed to whisper in my ear, "Why so serious?"

The sky is dry and the things are dry: 002. He chose to commit suicide in self-discipline and self-awareness (4K)

Tokyo is a city with a long history of 100 years. Of course, in some literary works, it is also called a city of 500 years, a city of 1,000 years, or even a city of 10,000 years. If we want to give it a false mythological history, we should call it "Ashihara China".

Or maybe, Awihara no Chiaki is five hundred years older than Mizuho no Kuni.

Tokyo Haneda International Airport is located in the southeast of Ota Ward. Countless steel bars serve as the skeleton to support this pale white, glass-covered giant. It lies prone in the wet mountains and breathes heavily. The hot wind sends passenger planes one by one into the high night sky. It is almost dawn. The sky is dim with a hint of light in the dimness. The stars are dim and the thin gray clouds are crawling slowly. Tokyo is a city that never sleeps. From late at night to dawn, it is always full of lights and wine. The tired blue-collar workers finish their busy nights and return to the small rental house under the slightly cold street lights. They wet their sallow faces with cold water and towels. In the mirror, there are asphalt stubble and bloodshot eyes. They wash and brush their teeth hastily, light a cigarette in the dark, and the orange-red firelight flickers. He said good night to himself self-deprecatingly, and then fell asleep on the small bed piled with sundries. He had no more energy to look forward to tomorrow, but occasionally mourned his youth and childhood inadvertently.

Amamiya Ren looked up at the LED sign hanging from the dome, carrying a schoolbag and dragging a magnesium-aluminum alloy suitcase in her left hand as she walked around outside the airport. In her free right hand, she was holding a fashion magazine she had picked up from the terminal. The densely packed vehicles on the low-pressure highway under the sea of ​​clouds were like a rushing river, and a ray of light that cut through the darkness came from the horizon. In fact, the sun was not visible, but the orange or white lights of the cars were waving their hands one after another, attracting the passengers who were waiting outside the terminal.

"Shigenjaya in Setagaya district," he pulled the door handle open without hesitation and got into the back seat. The taxi was extremely expensive. The driver also stepped on the accelerator without hesitation, fearing that the passenger would run away due to the high price. The door was closed and locked, ending the passenger's last hesitation and also ending Fukuzawa Yukichi's hope of escape.

Amamiya Ren put his schoolbag on the seat and placed the suitcase horizontally between the passenger seat backrest and the back seat. He turned on his cell phone to check the time.

It is 5:04 in the morning. There is still some time before the tram leaves the station. But he will be at his destination by : in the morning. The drivers who pick up passengers during this time period earn this emergency money.

As a high school student who has a criminal record at the Metropolitan Police Department at such a young age, his future is bleak. Amamiya Ren flipped through the application interface repeatedly, and finally resisted the urge to open "Fate/Grand Order". He might as well sleep a little longer with this free time, as he would be busy later.

He was forced to leave his hometown of Naoetsu, but fortunately his parents had acquaintances in Tokyo who helped him find a reliable guardian.

The driver did not take the initiative to talk. He could see the fatigue on his passenger's face. There was a harmonious silence until the sun suddenly rose in the dark night sky. A ray of bright golden glow appeared on the distant sea level, and the dark sea surface was rendered into a striking gradient of orange and yellow.

"Hey, wake up, we've arrived at our destination, it's Sita Station," the person who spoke knocked on the partition between the driver's seat and the back seat.

Amamiya Ren seemed to wake up, and instinct drove him to open his mobile phone immediately. The timestamp on the screen showed that it was almost six o'clock in the morning.

"You're quite young. Why did you come to Tokyo alone?" The driver picked up the meter and showed him the number on it.

"I experienced some bad things in my hometown, so I transferred to Tokyo," Amamiya Ren looked at the expensive fare and her hands trembled a little as she opened her wallet. She shouldn't have been greedy for the small discount on the night flight.

“承惠，5330元。”（热知识：这里是日元，约等于国内的273块钱。东京都的出租车起步价1公里420日元，之后每233米80日元起跳。根据时间段和地区会有价格浮动。）

The driver grabbed the banknotes handed over by the passenger... The kid held the money very tightly. He pulled harder and finally got it in his hand after two or three attempts.

Amamiya Ren watched Fukuzawa Yukichi leave his right hand and head for the world on the other side of the partition, which belonged to the world of adults. A feeling of reluctance flooded in his eyes. He put on his schoolbag, picked up his suitcase, pushed the door and left. A journey ended here, but his high school life had just begun.

"Hey, you dropped something," the old man who already had a family noticed that there was a fashion magazine with a teenage idol on the cover on the back seat.

Amamiya Ren did not look back and was cutting off her past self at the speed of light.

In this city where no one knows me, I want to...

What was I going to do? Finish school?

He finally took out his mobile phone, and the software with the profile of Quilt King Altria as its icon seemed to be shining, like the golden apple in the Garden of Eden, tempting the birth of a sin.

A new life starts with clearing out your motivation.

"EX-Caliburn!!!" Amid the powerful battle cry of King Arthur of Great Britain, a golden wave of light engulfed the skeleton soldiers holding swords and spears in front of him, and critical stars fell all over the ground.

AM6:30, Setagaya District, Sunken Plaza.

The street lights went out. Amamiya Ren, who was sitting on a bench and lost in the servants' calls of "Master", beat her chest and stamped her feet, then stood up boldly.

How did he become addicted to games?! He closed FGO with great sadness, not daring to look at Altria on the main interface any more.

Because one more look will...

Will be late.

The blue sky, the telephone poles covered with advertising papers, the neatly maintained and clean walls on the street corners, the red brick and gray walls showing a slight sense of age.

This is Shigenjaya. The outer area is modernized in line with the urban style of Tokyo, but as you go deeper, you can see the retro Showa-style streets. The bakery in the alley opened early, and a woman with some gray hair brought a plate of baked butter bread to the display cabinet.

The navigation on the mobile phone is not very useful here. The intricate alleys are so narrow that even the satellite can hardly display them clearly.

The destination was a coffee shop named...LeBlanc. "LeBlanc". He thought of the address his temporary guardian had sent in Line.

Amamiya Ren asked the traffic police on duty nearby, and found the teahouse at the entrance of a rather remote alley. The storefront was cold, and the narrow alley was covered with iron sheets on the other side, near an izakaya and restaurant with closed roller shutters. There were old bungalows in a mess in the alley, with messy graffiti on the faded cement walls, and a few old people chatting about their simple lives beside the open-air stairs. The strong smell of the Showa era was overwhelming.

The sign of "LeBron" coffee shop is not eye-catching. There is no LED light that looks like light pollution. It is just a simple and plain wooden board. It is located in such a deserted place, which makes people doubt whether it can attract customers.

Amamiya Ren thought that this was an open shop, so she didn't knock on the door and walked in directly. "Nice to meet you, good morning, Mr. Sakura."

He greeted the middle-aged man who was wiping the counter carefully with some restraint.

The other person turned around, revealing a high and shiny forehead, a pair of square glasses, short black hair neatly combed behind his head, a straight face with a few wrinkles, and a thick beard on his chin and face. Mr. Sakura is the owner of this coffee shop. He is wearing a light pink shirt and a black mesh kitchen apron. He meticulously arranged the bottles and jars on the counter, and then looked at the first customer of the day with a gentle look.

"Hello, would you like something?"

The young man felt suffocated for the first time when his guardian did not recognize him when they met for the first time. "I am Amamiya Ren from Naoetsu. Thank you for your care!"

Taking into account the environment of the store, Amamiya Ren imitated the vigor and vitality of the Showa men in TV dramas and spoke in a decisive tone.

"Oh, it's you," the store manager immediately frowned, "I'm Sakura Jiawei-san, your guardian."

"Amamiya Ren..." He muttered the name, "I didn't expect a kid like you to come. I thought it would be a little thug covered in thorns."

The young man who came from afar wore a white shirt with wrinkles ironed out. He had a well-proportioned body and a slender figure, and he obviously had the signs of regular exercise. He was not a gloomy otaku. He wore a pair of large round-frame glasses on his face. At first glance, he looked ordinary, like an ordinary middle school student that could be seen everywhere on campus, but a closer look would reveal that his facial features were three-dimensional and detailed. If he took off his glasses, he would be an undoubted "Tokyo handsome boy." Such a student would be the center of the class, the most popular student in the grade, and his grades would not be too bad.

"I heard that you are writing a novel and have published it?"

"It's a bit profitable, at least in the next few years, I don't have to worry about starving to death in the bridge hole," Amamiya Lian thought that the other party probably hadn't read his book. The suspense novel based on the real event of "several children narrowly escaped death from the siege of a cult and eventually destroyed their plan" is quite famous in Japan. Anyway, he used the money to buy a nice villa in Naoetsu with his parents.

"It seems that I can pay for my own tuition and living expenses," Sakura's expression changed slightly. It is rare for someone to be able to take care of himself or even be financially independent at this age. "Not bad, it would be better if it could make me less worried."

He was referring to the "Protection Observation" on Amamiya Ren's back, "I have already contacted the school for you. Let's go together to handle the formalities after dinner this afternoon."

What about now? Amamiya Ren is a little hungry. She wants to go out for a walk and buy some breakfast...

Sakura Jiawei Shaojun followed his expectation and the guardian, who he met for the first time, asked him to wait for a moment and went into the kitchen to bring out a plate of cheesecake and hot coffee.

"The milk and sugar are on your left, add them if you need them. This is breakfast, after you finish eating I will take you outside to pick out a suitable rental house."

After he said that, he went back to the kitchen and continued working.

As Amamiya Ren smelled the sweet heat from the cake and the well-brewed black coffee, the fatigue from the long journey eased a lot.

Really reliable, he sighed, much more stable and considerate than the "guardian" he found in Osaka. Coming to Tokyo was indeed the right decision.

Amamiya Ren's parents were very concerned about his future, and they searched through the phone book and looked for a high school willing to accept him. In the end, they decided on Osaka's private Hikarizaka High School, Prefectural Kita High School, and Tokyo's Shujin High School.