Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The rain never stopped in Neo-Tokyo. It wasn’t natural rain—it was the kind churned out by the city’s endless factories, laced with oil slicks and chemical traces that glowed faintly under the harsh neon lights. The sky was a permanent shade of gray, swallowed by the towering megastructures that cast jagged shadows over the crumbling lower levels.  

Down here, in the Undercity, nobody looked up. Nobody cared about the glass-and-steel palaces where the elites lived. Survival was enough.  

Except for him.  

Nagi Seishiro sat on the edge of a rusted fire escape, staring up at the faint glimmer of a corporate hovercar cutting through the gloom. His shaggy white hair clung to his forehead, damp from the rain he couldn’t be bothered to avoid. The faint glow of his cybernetic eye reflected in the puddle below—a hacked model, of course, capable of interfacing with any system he wanted.  

If only he cared enough to use it.  

He let out a long sigh, spinning a battered coin between his fingers. Another job finished, another round of creds to keep him fed and sheltered. It was more than most people down here had, but it wasn’t much of a life. Not that he was complaining—he couldn’t remember the last time he’d cared enough to complain.  

“Man, everything’s so dull,” he muttered, flipping the coin into the air. “Maybe I’ll just sleep for the rest of the week.”  

The coin clattered onto the ground below, and a voice answered from the shadows.  

“Boredom won’t kill you, but sitting out in the open might.”  

Nagi leaned forward lazily, his cybernetic eye scanning the source of the sound. His enhanced vision quickly mapped out the figure—a tall man, dressed sharply in a suit that practically screamed “corporate.” Violet hair, clean-cut, and carrying an air of confidence that didn’t belong in the Undercity.  

Nagi smirked. “You lost, Suit? This isn’t the high-rise district.”  

The man stepped closer, his polished shoes splashing through puddles without hesitation. “No. I’m right where I need to be.”  

“Uh-huh.” Nagi cocked his head, feigning interest. “What’s someone like you want in a place like this? Or is this your weird way of hiring me? Lemme guess—busted hovercar? Missing files? Some corpo rival playing dirty?”  

“None of the above.” The man stopped just beneath the fire escape, looking up at Nagi with calm, calculating eyes. “I need your help.”  

“Same thing,” Nagi replied with a shrug. “What’s the job?”  

“Breaking into Mikage Corporation’s central server.”  

The coin slipped from Nagi’s fingers, bouncing once before disappearing into a crack in the pavement. He blinked, then snorted. “Mikage Corporation? Wow. You’ve got a death wish, huh?” He leaned further down, resting his chin on his hand. “Listen, I don’t know who you are, but there’s no amount of creds that’ll make me take on those guys. They don’t just kill people—they erase them. You won’t even exist as a bad memory.”  

“That’s why I need you,” the man replied smoothly, as if he hadn’t just proposed the most suicidal idea in the galaxy. “No one else can do it.”  

Something about the way he said it—so calm, so certain—made Nagi pause. He stared at the stranger, trying to figure out if he was delusional or just incredibly stubborn.  

“Okay, I’ll bite,” Nagi said, pushing himself to his feet and leaning on the rail. “What’s so important that you’d risk wiping yourself out of existence? Got some dirt on them? Revenge, maybe? Or is this just some messed-up cry for help?”  

The man hesitated for the first time. A flicker of something crossed his face—regret? Determination? It was hard to tell in the dim light.  

“Let’s just say I have a personal stake in this,” he said finally. “And I don’t have time to waste convincing you. Are you in or not?”  

Nagi let out a low whistle. “Man, you’re really bad at this whole hiring thing. You’re supposed to sweeten the deal, not bark orders.”  

The man looked up, and for the first time, Nagi saw a faint smile tug at the corner of his lips. It wasn’t a corporate smile, all polished and fake—it was real, subtle, like he was amused despite himself.  

“Fair enough,” he said. “I’m Reo, by the way. Reo Mikage.”  

The world seemed to tilt for a moment, and Nagi blinked. He knew the name, of course—everyone did. The Mikage family was practically royalty, their corporation controlling everything from biotech to energy.  

“Holy shit,” Nagi muttered. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”  

“Completely.” Reo’s smile widened, just a little.  

Nagi leaned against the rail, studying him with newfound interest. There was something about Reo that didn’t fit the corpo stereotype—something sharp, but not cold. Something alive.  

For the first time in a long while, Nagi felt a flicker of curiosity. And maybe—just maybe—a little bit of excitement.  

“Well,” he said slowly, a lazy grin spreading across his face. “I guess I can’t say no to royalty. Especially not one with a smile like that.”  

Reo raised an eyebrow. “Does that mean you’re in?”  

“It means you’ve got my attention,” Nagi replied. “The rest depends on how much fun this gets.”  

Reo chuckled softly, the sound low and warm. “I have a feeling you won’t be disappointed.”  

Nagi watched as Reo turned and started walking away, his silhouette sharp against the neon glow. He should’ve felt annoyed, or wary, or something other than the faint thrum of interest that settled in his chest. But all he could think about was the way Reo had smiled at him.  

And, for the first time in years, Nagi wondered if maybe—just maybe—life wasn’t as pointless as he’d thought.  

Chapter Text

The world outside their apartment was vast and cruel, but to Nagi, it didn’t exist.  

He lived in a world of glowing screens, and the quiet hum of machines. The rhythmic clicking of keys was his lullaby; the flickering neon reflections on the window were his nightlight. The city was a monster that devoured people whole, but here—inside this dim, cramped space—he was safe.  

His parents were ghosts to the outside world, slipping through firewalls and rewriting digital blueprints with hands steadier than surgeons. They had no social standing, no wealth, no name worth speaking aloud in polite society. But in the underbelly of cyberspace, they were more than people. They were myths, untouchable and unseen.  

And yet, to Nagi, they were just Mom and Dad.  

His mother’s hands were always cold, but her voice was warm when she spoke to him. “Come here, Nagi.” She guided his small fingers toward a keyboard, her own hovering just above. The screen in front of them blinked to life, endless strings of code dancing before his eyes. “Do you see these? These are like words. Machines don’t speak like us. They need a different kind of language.”  

Nagi blinked slowly, absorbing everything. His father leaned against the desk nearby, arms crossed, watching. “More like a way to trick them into doing what you want,” he added with a small smirk.  

Nagi didn’t know what they meant, not entirely. But he understood. The moment his fingers brushed against the keys, something clicked inside him. The symbols weren’t just symbols—they were doors, pathways, puzzles waiting to be unraveled.  

He was barely old enough to walk without stumbling, but he already knew how to navigate firewalls. He didn’t have friends, but he had encrypted landscapes he could get lost in for hours. He never played outside, never cared for the rust and decay of the real world. His world was here, inside glowing screens and whispered algorithms.  

And he was happy.  

---

The lights flickered. Power was unstable in this part of the city, but no one flinched. It was normal.  

Nagi sat curled up on his mother’s lap, half-asleep, his head resting against her shoulder. His father sat across from them, a cigarette burning lazily between his fingers, though he rarely smoked past the first few drags.  

A quiet moment. A rare thing.  

His mother’s hand ghosted over his soft white hair, her fingers playing with the strands absentmindedly. Then, as if thinking aloud, she murmured, “Nagi.”  

He made a small sound in response, but didn’t open his eyes.  

Her voice was calm. Steady. “Don’t die before I do.”  

His father exhaled, watching the smoke curl into the air. “Yeah,” he murmured. “That’d be a real hassle.”  

Nagi’s eyelids fluttered open, and he turned his head slightly to look up at them. Their faces were unreadable—neither sad nor afraid, just… resigned. As if they were reminding themselves of something inevitable.  

He didn’t understand.  

But their words weren’t heavy. They weren’t a warning, or a plea, or something to be feared. They settled into his bones as something warm. Something soft.  

“…Okay,” he said.  

A simple promise. A quiet truth.  

In that moment, he was still just a child, wrapped in the safety of his parents’ presence, unable to imagine a world where they wouldn’t always be there.  

And in that moment, the words made him happy.

---

The message came through on a dim screen, nothing more than a string of text. No sirens. No breaking news. No one knocking on his door to tell him the world had changed.  

Just a single, cold notification.  

Two unidentified bodies recovered in District 13. Cause of death: Execution.

Nagi stared at the words. His fingers hovered over the keyboard, the glow of the monitor casting pale light over his face. He reread it once. Twice.  

Then he clicked the tab shut.  

He didn’t move. Didn’t blink. The room around him was silent, save for the low hum of old machinery. He thought—shouldn’t he feel something?  

His parents were dead.  

They’d always lived on borrowed time. They never planned for a future, never talked about growing old. They existed on the fringes, running jobs that got them just enough to scrape by. And now, just like that, they were gone.  

And Nagi… was still here.  

The air felt stale. The apartment was the same as before, cluttered with old cables, scattered data drives, and the faint scent of solder and burnt-out circuits. But it felt empty now.  

Something inside him should have broken.  

Instead, there was just—nothing.  

---

Days passed. Then weeks. Maybe months.  

No one came for him. No one checked in. His parents had never been the type to form connections, and neither was he.  

No one particularly cared about Nagi, and he didn’t particularly care about them either.  

He kept going because stopping would be a hassle. He took hacking gigs—low-risk, low-effort jobs that got him just enough credits to survive. He didn’t try too hard. Didn’t push himself.  

He didn’t need to.  

He lived in the same apartment until the power finally got cut. Then he moved somewhere else, somewhere cheaper, somewhere with enough signal to do the bare minimum to keep going.  

Food? Whatever was closest. Work? Whatever paid. Sleep? Whenever he got tired.  

Days blurred into each other, colorless and weightless.  

He thought about his parents sometimes. Not in a painful way, not in the way that made his chest ache or his throat tighten. Just in the same way someone recalls an old dream—faint, distant, slipping through his fingers before he could hold onto it.  

“Don’t die before I do.”  

That was what they’d told him. And somehow, he’d broken that promise.  

Nagi didn’t know what to feel about that.  

He didn’t know what to feel about anything.  

But he knew that the version of himself that existed in that tiny, cluttered apartment—the one who lived in his own little bubble, happy with the world he had—was gone.  

A part of him had died with them.

---

The city glittered with artificial light, neon signs reflecting off the slick pavement. High above, the sky was barely visible past the towering skyscrapers and tangled highways, but Nagi never really looked up anyway.  

He followed Reo through the dimly lit alley, hands stuffed in his pockets, his steps lazy but steady. The air smelled of rain and oil, the usual mix of metal and rot that clung to the underbelly of the city.  

At the end of the alley, a sleek, black luxury car awaited them. Its smooth surface barely had a scratch, looking almost out of place in a world so full of rust and decay.  

Reo approached the car first, the doors unlocking with a soft hiss. He gestured for Nagi to get in, sliding into the driver’s seat himself. Nagi stared at the car for a second before sighing and ducking inside.  

The seats were soft leather, cool against his skin. The faint scent of something expensive—polished wood and a hint of cologne—lingered in the air.  

“You’re really something, huh?” Nagi mumbled, letting his head fall back against the seat.  

Reo smirked. “Something good, I hope.”  

The car pulled into motion, gliding smoothly through the streets. The inside was quiet, insulated from the outside noise of sirens and distant gunfire.  

“You’ll be meeting the rest of the squad soon,” Reo said casually, one hand on the wheel as he navigated the roads. “I’ve assembled a team for this mission, and you’ll be going undercover as my bodyguard.”  

Nagi blinked, turning his head slightly to glance at him. “Bodyguard?”  

Reo nodded, eyes fixed on the road ahead. “You’ve got the height and the build for it. No one will question it.”  

Nagi exhaled through his nose, tilting his head against the headrest. “What a hassle.”  

“You’ll live.”  

They drove in silence for a while, the city lights casting fleeting shadows across Reo’s sharp features. Nagi watched the way they shifted across his face, his expression unreadable yet somehow determined.  

“…Why are you doing all this?” Nagi asked finally, voice quiet.  

Reo didn’t answer right away.  

For a moment, it seemed like he wasn’t going to. Then, he sighed, his fingers tightening slightly around the wheel.  

“I used to believe the world made sense,” he said, his voice steady but laced with something deeper—something almost bitter. “That if you worked hard enough, if you played by the rules, you could get what you wanted. That you could change things.”  

His jaw clenched briefly before he forced himself to relax.  

“But the world isn’t fair. It’s just a system, built by the people in power to keep themselves there.” His violet eyes flicked toward Nagi, sharp and unreadable. “I refuse to accept that.”  

Nagi listened quietly, the usual haze in his mind lifting just a little.  

“Everything is broken, and no one even questions it anymore,” Reo continued, his voice carrying something raw beneath its usual charm. “People are suffering, and the ones at the top just keep tightening their grip. But I won’t sit around and let them win.”  

His hands flexed against the wheel. “I’m going to fix it.”  

Nagi didn’t respond right away. He watched Reo, taking in the fire in his expression, the way he carried himself—so sure, so determined.  

It was different from anything Nagi had seen in a long time.  

The world had long since lost its color for him, fading into something distant and meaningless. But listening to Reo now…  

He almost felt something again.  

“…That sounds exhausting,” Nagi muttered.  

Reo laughed, a short, quiet chuckle. “It is.”  

Nagi turned his gaze back toward the city lights outside, his fingers absently tapping against his knee.  

For the first time in a long while, he didn’t immediately dismiss something as a hassle.