Jobless Reincarnation X Tensura: 《THE ANOMALY》

Chapter 5: When the rain ends.

Attempting to quantify and compare loss is a fool's errand.
Of what meaning is a competition between failures? Know your place.

---- Perugius Dola, K417.

“Sit still, your fate will be decided soon.”

I paid no heed to the armor clad man who was responsible for locking me in my cell, his words were meaningless to me.

As he walked away, he fiddled with a bunch of keys that definitely held more significance than the grating jangle suggested.

Now, I've been arrested.

Of course, whether I was truly in a state of captivity was up for debate. Sure, I was placed in a barrier that allegedly sealed magic —according to who I assumed was the warden, at least —- and sure, this “prison” was teeming with a force of about a hundred men.

But that hardly mattered.

Escaping wasn't much of a possibility, it was more defined than that.

It was a certainty.

“Well, I have no intention of going anywhere now…”

Despite my own decision to remain in this state of purely illusory incarceration, I was still a bit annoyed.

The cell—if that term was even appropriate — amounted to nothing more than a bare room with a magic circle inscribed into its floor.

It does seem like backward thinking to be concerned about the circumstances of a situation I could easily resolve, but…when have feelings been entirely logical?

“Still..racism, huh.”

It wasn't a concept I was unfamiliar with, even as an ordinary salaryman living a life fairly isolated from the darker parts of humanity—- still got stabbed to death, but eh— it wasn't something that I was completely ignorant of.

But seeing is believing, or rather in this case, and in many others, experiencing would be more appropriate.

I looked at my wrists, which were encircled by metal manacles, with the chain fastened to a rather unstable looking section of the wall..

“Was it always like that..?” I could've sworn it looked more sturdy when I arrived.

“Oh, I see.”

It wasn't hard to understand, I had simply lost control of my strength and almost ripped the chains out of the wall.

As for why that had even happened…

I was angry, that was it.

Is being different that much of a crime? Are humans so convinced of their superiority that anything that deviates from their “normal” by any metric is immediately labeled as inferior and dispensable?

I was angry, but not for myself.

I had no right to be angry on my own account, I wasn't even truly one of them.

Rather, looking at it clearly, I was more like them.

Like the warden that locked me in here, like the guard that found amusement at the prospect of holding a prisoner’s fate in his hands.

Like Hinata.

Crack

“I have to calm down.”

My aura had leaked out and wasted no time in spreading its corrosion. I inspected my manacles, which now looked like they had been oxidizing for god knows how long, in contrast to how new it was before. Good thing I isolated Nanahoshi earlier on.