#bubblesymphony

An elderly woman passed through his peripheral vision as he roamed the streets, her figure catching his attention just long enough for him to get a glimpse of her expression. Almost at once, gruesome visions of death flashed before his eyes.

She was to die soon. He couldn’t pinpoint how, as the elderly were prone to many accidents and the fragmented futures that crisscrossed through his field of vision weren’t either true nor false, but every path led to an abrupt stop. There were many funeral scenes, each held in different locations; decorated with flowers and pictures that changed with every image. Burial sites, cremation, a river send-off… to each fragmented piece, these variables changed—but the tear-stained faces of what Jin assumed to be her loved ones were always present.

He didn’t know what they looked like, so he couldn’t see them clearly. Every person’s image was contorted, but he counted the same number of figures in each crossroad. He couldn’t see the tears, but something told him they were crying.

The only hint that Jin had saw something came as his eyes briefly hardened—nothing more. Something compelled him to greet the stranger, to get to know this woman before she undoubtedly met her fate, but he held back, beginning to whistle a lighthearted tune as he continued down the path ahead.

To have the ability to see the future… it was a double-edged sword. He wouldn’t choose to live his life any differently if given the chance, but it didn’t change the fact that there were times he looked at others with envy. Many people in this world were at the same point in life as that elderly woman, and not only had he seen their futures—Jin had watched many deaths come to fruition over the years. In his line of work, a good portion of them came from the hands of neighbors, but there were always others. Murders. Accidents. Illnesses. Old age. Suicides. The reality that every living person’s life was eventually going to come to an end rested on his shoulders in the form of a weight, and each individual instance that came to pass only made it increasingly heavier.

A faint, but wry smile passed over his lips now: of course, that wasn’t all there was to it.

No, the burden of seeing into the futures of the people around him didn’t end there. If he wished, he could cut it at that point, as the rest came voluntarily—but he knew he would never be able to live with himself if he did. Jin wanted to save these people, to avert away from the worst-case crossroads that were paved ahead. More often than not, there were too many people to save at once, and he would have to make a decision… such as the time he’d willingly put Tamakoma 2’s lives at stake. Was it a question of whose lives were more valuable? The quantity of people he saved? Thoughts along these lines, always left unanswered, cycled through his mind almost daily.

In nearly sacrificing Chika, hundreds, maybe thousands of people were able to return home to their families that night, but… at what cost? Something that never failed to shake him down to the bone were the crossroads that appeared even worse than death. Abduction, torture, memory wiping…

He’d seen the fragments of what would become of the C ranks that had been abducted. Having long since come to terms with it, and similar situations of the past, the elite was able to face these problems head on, but it was never something he wished to speak of.

“Huh.” Staring with mild interest at the doors that were in front of him before he knew it, Jin hummed. “That was a fast walk.”

As soon as he was inside Border’s walls, the same thoughts began to stream again—though this time, he remained vigilant. A façade he practiced day to day, he preferred to keep calm, collected, and confident above anything else. After all, if his cute juniors saw the super cool formerly S-ranked Jin Yuuichi panic, distraught, or spacing out, where would his reputation go?

More importantly, he wanted to think of himself as someone his colleagues, precious underlings, dear friends, and higher-ups could rely on, he wanted to use his side effect for good. If his confidence ever waned, he had to kick it back into himself on the spot, because Jin knew he himself of all people couldn’t afford to not keep his courage. If he could change something, anything, by giving the red strings of fate a slight tug… he was going to do it, no matter what it took.

And these people he was protecting, he wanted to know them. The old woman he’d passed by earlier, he’d wanted to greet her. They were what drove him to carry on with his mission, just as much as they were what was anchoring him down. The border agents, engineers, and administrators he passed by in the hallways—he knew them all by name, and he remembered their faces clearly. In the back of his head, something would nag at him that it was strange he knew these people more intimately by glancing at their futures than they’d ever know him, but there wasn’t much of a way around that.

In getting to know those around him, he was able to be more appreciative of the happier crossroads he observed, too. Relationships, vacations, hobbies, rivalries, friends, family, good food that came to them as satisfying as the crunch of a crispy bochiage was to Jin; the amount of good things in the world there was to live for undoubtedly overpowered the bad. The satisfaction of seeing these people live another day with smiles on their faces, in turn, would come to balance out with any negatives—and continue to drive him forward.