Thief of Rhythm

Prologue: A Thief's Beginning

The sun slowly rises, signaling the start of a new day. Akira Kurasu slowly gets out of his bed and prepares himself to start his first day of school at Hanasakigawa High School, which was previously a all girls school, but has switched to a normal public school. Before leaving towards the school, he examines himself using the hallway mirror. His black hair was as dark as night, yet somehow seemed to show a hint of light. He began to mess with his glasses, trying to get a natural calm and what some people say a "normal" look. Besides he average looks, his one unique feature was his eyes, which were a light shade of blue. After completing the check, he then closed the door behind him and headed to school.

As Akira walked to Hanasakigawa, he slowly reflected on his life and his parents. Back in his days of youth, he was considerably close with his father. His father was an up and coming magician, who went by The Great Kurasu. His magic would mesmerize the entire audience who would attend his shows. Some people would even dare call him the "Magician of the Century". He single-handedly help reignited the concept of magic for others around the world. His father helped cemented Akira's fondness of both magic and giving the audience a show.

However, these days would not last forever though, his father would die in a freak accident. Three years ago, The Great Kurasu was having his biggest show to date. Everything was going so well, he had the audience's full attention in the palm of his hands. During his final act, the venue suddenly erupted into flames. Reportedly, everyone was able to escape the venue, but The Great Kurasu was never seen ever again. There were no remains found at the scene, not even the security cameras provided any useful information. Even investigation officials had no single idea of how the accident happened, or where the current whereabouts of Akira's father was. In the end, the investigation ended  and it was determined that the cause of the fire was likely "human error", mostly pointing to Akira's father, who did magic tricks involving pyrotechnics that day. Regardless of what others say, Akira knew his father would never make such a foolish error. He knew that something else must have happened on that fated day.

Akira would soon get brought back into the realms of reality as he saw more and more students walking to the school. Akira soon arrives at Hanasakigawa. He makes his way to the entrance ceremony and then sat with his class. '3-A huh', Akira thought to himself as the opening ceremony began. He decided to pay little to no attention through the formalities of the first day. Once the ceremony ended, he would make his to his class to officially start his last year. Luckily, he was assigned a desk right beside a window. He paid mild attention as class truly began, and took advantage of his desk's placement and looked distantly outside, seeing the sakura trees in full bloom.

As the day progresses, he would take notice of some of his fellow classmates. This would mostly consist of the two student council members, named Sayo Hikawa and Rinko Shirokane. Another one who caught the young man's eye was someone named Chisato Shirasagi, an apparent idol and actor. And lastly, an acquaintance of Shirasagi-san, a somewhat clusy, yet cute Kanon Matsubara. There was no particular reason behind this sudden interest in them, it was his first time even knowing of their existence. 'Probably just playing tricks on myself', Akira thought to himself as he then waited for lunch.

Two hours later, lunch has arrived. As he walked looking for somewhere to eat, he passed by what others may call "interesting" students. He saw a group of five girls, who were second years, with one having what can only be described as "cat ears" eating together. Later on, he also spotted a group of three second years, with one student being really over the top energetic and spouting out stuff about "Smiles" and "Making the World Smile". Right after that, he saw a white haired girl mostly talking about the ancient code of honor for samuris, bushido. And lastly, Akira saw a pinked haired girl walk up to Shirasagi-san and began a conversation with her. 'She's a third years as well', Akira thought to himself as he finally recalled who she was, she is Aya Maruyama.

After finding a relatively quiet place with a few students, mostly consisting of first and second years, Akira decides to perform some magic to entertain them as they ate. He silently got out a deck of playing cards and starts doing some basic tricks, with some people applauding. This was then that he decides to crank it up a bit, by doing more advance sleight of hand maneuvers and even making cards appear in a person's pocket. Now the applause was louder than before. In comparison to his father, he still had a long way to go. However, he has made such a huge advancement with his magic, maybe one day he can truly rival his dad's own abilities. Sadly, lunch was about to come to an end. He took a bow and then thanked the audience. Then he made his way back to the classroom.

Nothing particularly interesting happened for the rest of the day, though he narrowly avoided getting reprimanded by Hikawa-san, who thought Akira was totally spacing out in class. After school was finished, he decided to return back home. Once he entered the house, he went straight to his bed and flopped his body on top of it. "I need to get a job", Akira said to himself. He barely gets by somehow with his allowance given by his mom, but he knew that he could not rely on this forever. "Well, guess I better to start the search now." He then got out his laptop and started searching, finding a few possible candidates for his first ever job.

After finishing the job search, he was about to call it a day, until he noticed something rather peculiar behind the bookshelf . "Is that another room, first time hearing about this?" He tried to push the bookshelf to reveal the hidden room, however it was weirdly impossible to move away. "Guess it really is supposed to remain hidden." He then resorted to looking around at the bookshelf, looking for some type of mechanism that could unlock the hidden room. Akira then noticed a book that oddly looked out of place. He decided to tug on the book, a sudden load noise echoed inside the house. The bookshelf then slowly pushed it, just enough for a the mysterious secret room to become visible. "Time to see what truly lurks behind this shelf", Akira said as he then bravely entered the dark room.

After entering the room, the lights suddenly flicked on, developing it entirely in a flash of light. After recovering from the sudden flash of light, a room filled with can only be described as equipment for heists became visibly present. After a minute of taking the revelation in, the center of the room slowly began rise up from the flooring, with it revealing a black tuxedo, a matching top hat, and what seems to be a modified handgun that replaces the bullets for less lethal playing cards. While all of this occurs, a message over the intercom begins to play.

"My dear son Akira, I hereby pass you the baton. From today onwards, you are now the Great Gentleman Thief!"

Author's Notes: Hey guys, hope y'all enjoyed the first chapter of "Thief of Rhythm". This is my first real bandori book and book in general. If there is any type of feedback you want to give, please do. For this prologue, I just wanted to focus on the main charcter, but I will be adding the band girls later on. I also just want to thank drawntoast, Quint_lover, spookyquail, FantasyWriter241, misakoko7 , JAM1911, and many others that inspired me to attempt writing a story.