In a near-future society, humanity is split into rulers and the ruled. The ruled have no rights. Children without parents are raised in facilities and shipped out as disposable resources once they reach adulthood. Werner, a noble of the ruling class, hosts death games as entertainment using these people. The preliminaries are a simple war of attrition—hundreds run, and only survivors advance. The champion of the main event is promised "human rights."
Kaito and Ren, both facility-raised, survive
A Will for the Survivors - To the City of Hourglasses — Those Called by Numbers
The winter he was twelve, the boy who shared his room tried to escape.
Sodateya Facility No. 7, North Wing, third floor. Beyond the barred window, the dim air of the lower levels always hung stagnant. At night, only the emergency lights in the corridor flickered on, pale and blue-white, casting cold light across the concrete walls. Kaito sat on his bunk, blanket pulled up to his knees, staring at the bed beside his. That bed always held a boy named Miharu.
Miharu was two years older than Kaito, and had lived in that room longer than anyone. After lights-out, he would often talk in a low voice about the outside. That there were places in the upper levels where real trees grew. That food wasn't ration paste but something warm, something that smelled sweet. All of it was secondhand—things Miharu had heard from someone else. Kaito didn't believe any of it, but he didn't mind listening.
That night, Miharu was different. Even after the lights-out buzzer sounded, he didn't lie down. He peered through the gap in the door into the corridor. When Kaito tried to call out to him, Miharu turned and smiled.
"I'm going tonight."
Kaito couldn't say anything. Miharu left it at that, cracked the door open, and slipped into the corridor. The iron hinges let out a faint, drawn-out sound, like a sob.
After that, how much time passed?
In the distance, a burst. Not one. Three, four, spaced apart—then screaming. Kaito climbed down from his bunk and pressed his eye to the gap in the door. At the far end of the corridor, beyond the window, a red light pulsed. The hum of security drones traveled along the walls like the beating of insect wings.
Kaito saw.
Beneath the pale emergency lights, Miharu lay collapsed. Dark liquid spread from every part of him. He wasn't moving. Only his eyes were open, fixed on the door where Kaito stood, watching.
That night, Kaito drove his fist into the wall. Not once. Again and again and again, until the skin above his left brow split open and blood ran into his eye. He was afraid of letting emotion show on his face. No—that wasn't it. He was afraid of someone seeing the emotion he let show. So he decided to break his own face. To learn, through pain, how to erase his expressions.
The old scar above his left brow was born that way.
—
Year 2247.
Humanity had lost ninety-seven percent of the surface. In the wake of the large-scale environmental collapse known as the Seven Days of Ruin, the roughly five hundred thousand survivors were sealed inside the Cages—enormous cities stacked vertically. Twelve kilometers in diameter, two point three kilometers tall. A four-hundred-meter-thick alloy wall separated the polluted outside from everything within.
In the upper levels of the Cages lived the ruling class, known as Holders. About eighty thousand of them. They owned green spaces and luxury residences, and treated the subjugated class—the Resources—as objects. The Resource Human Rights Denial Act. Article One read: "A Resource is the property of a Holder and possesses no legal rights." Article Seven: "The killing of a Resource shall be treated as a charge of property damage."
Kaito was one of those Resources.
Lower level one hundred thirty-five. Born in the breeding facility Sodateya No. 7, he had been raised on labor and basic education until the age of sixteen, when he was to be shipped out. He was eighteen now. The only reason he was still alive past shipping age was that he had been selected as a participant in a death game called Tokēbako.
Tokēbako.
A public killing competition held once a year, sponsored by the Holder Council. The House of Duke Veruna ran it as an entertainment industry, releasing Resources into a sealed sector to slaughter one another. The audience watched from observation halls in the upper levels, or from monitors in their homes, enjoying the spectacle as an object of betting. The winner, it was said, would be granted "human rights." Few knew whether that was true.
Kaito had survived the preliminaries. A war of attrition involving hundreds. At the end, there had even been a lottery draw to decide life and death. Not by skill—by luck. He had been lucky. No—unlucky. He had survived.
—
The night before he was to be sent into the main event, Kaito met with a contact from Kusabi.
Kusabi. An underground organization aiming to liberate the Resources, with roughly three hundred members. Composed mainly of former Resources and gray-zone middle-class sympathizers, they operated as a small crack driven into the structure of domination. Kaito had been their collaborator for several years.
The contact was a middle-aged man who never showed his face. Only his voice echoed through the basement of the abandoned factory.
"In the main event, keep as many participants alive as you can. That is the organization's policy."
Kaito said nothing.
"Your survival is not the top priority. You understand that."
He understood. Of course he understood.
But in Kaito's mind, there was another image. The final stage of the preliminaries. A girl chosen by lottery, just as she was being led away, turned back and smiled at him. He couldn't hear her voice. But he understood from the shape of her lips.
Live.
That's what she'd said. Even though she was the one about to die.
Kaito was bound by that smile. Not by the organization's orders. Not by guilt over surviving. Just—the movement of that girl's lips had stuck to the inside of him and wouldn't come off.
—
The day of the main event.
Kaito was transported along with thirty-odd other participants to the sealed industrial sector of Sunadokei, on mid-level ninety-five. The transport electric carts were featureless boxes with no seats, and the participants rode standing, swaying. No one spoke. Only the sound of the man beside him breathing seemed unnaturally loud.
Kaito looked at his wristband. The Resource terminal, commonly called a tag. A wristband-type device forcibly attached to every participant, impossible to remove. A micro-bomb was embedded in his carotid artery. If time ran out, or if he violated a rule, it would detonate.
The cart stopped, and the doors opened.
Light flooded into his eyes all at once.
—
Sunadokei Sector.
It had once been a place lined with precision machinery factories. Closed fifteen years ago, it was now nothing but rusted pipes and collapsed walls. Area: roughly one point two square kilometers. At the center of the sector loomed a thirty-meter hourglass-shaped monument.
Kaito stepped forward. The ground was cracked concrete, with metal fragments jutting up here and there. The air was a mix of oil and dust, clinging to the back of his throat.
Above his head, a small shadow darted across.
Surveillance drones, commonly called flies. Fifteen centimeters long, designed for silence, they tracked the participants' positions at all times and streamed footage to the audience. They carried no weapons. But their mere presence made it clear: you are always being watched.
The participants were gathered before the monument. Thirty-odd of them. Ages and builds all different. All wore gray work uniforms, all stood the same way—expressionless.
A voice flowed from the speakers.
It was the voice of a female operations assistant. Flat, unreadable.
"The Tokēbako main event will now begin."
Kaito raised his head.
"The arena is Sunadokei Sector. The time limit is until the central hourglass runs out. The survival line is three points. Sixty rings are hidden throughout the arena. If your total is fewer than three when time expires, the micro-bomb in your carotid artery will detonate."
Rings.
Special metal rings used in the Tokēbako main event. Taking one in hand puts it in a "confirmed" state, and the count is displayed on your terminal. Sixty rings. Thirty-odd participants. By simple arithmetic, there weren't enough for everyone to get three.
"Additionally, from today, all of you participating in this game will be called by number. You have no names. Now then—begin the trial."
The speakers cut off.
A moment of silence.
Then the participants moved all at once.
—
Kaito didn't move from where he stood.
Not that he couldn't. He chose not to.
In his mind, from the instant the rules were announced, a single possibility had been spinning.
Rings, once picked up and held, show on your terminal. So—what if you don't pick them up? What if you hide them? If they don't show on the terminal, no one around you can know how many you hold.
Feign zero holdings.
That was the strategy Kaito had chosen.
Trust no one. Show no one. Don't even appear in the audience's odds. Vanish from the crowd as just another weak participant.
Kaito watched the participants scatter in all directions from the shadow of the monument. They ran toward the ruins of the collapsed factories, each trying to beat the others. Already, in the distance, he could hear shouting. The sound of metal striking metal. Screams.
Kaito looked at his own palm. His fingertips bore countless small burn scars. From machine work at the facility. These hands had touched hot metal more times than he could count. He was used to pain.
He exhaled slowly.
That was when it happened.
—
In the shadow of a distant ruined pipe, something moved.
Kaito's gaze was drawn toward it.
Beyond the collapsed wall. In the darkness where thick rusted pipes crossed, there was a boy.
Brown, unruly hair. Bright amber eyes. Small, slender frame. The sleeves of his gray work uniform rolled up to the elbows.
The boy was quietly, but steadily, slipping deeper into the ruins, away from the crowd. There was no hesitation in his movements.
Kaito narrowed his eyes.
He's the same.
Feigning zero holdings, vanishing from the crowd. Trying to become something unseen, unknown, absent from the audience's odds.
The boy glanced back over his shoulder—just once.
Those amber eyes, for an instant, caught the direction where Kaito stood.
No words were exchanged. They didn't know each other's names.
But Kaito was certain.
That guy had chosen the same strategy, at the same moment.
—
The boy looked away at once and disappeared into the shadow of the ruined pipes.
Kaito stood there for a while.
His heart beat quietly, but steadily.
He had a premonition.
He would meet that boy again.
And when he did, something would begin to move.
—
Kaito stepped out from the shadow of the monument.
He, too, was going to vanish from the crowd.
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