1

By the year 36XX, the extraordinary had long since become ordinary. For generations, humans awakened on their 17th birthdays with powers as unique as their fingerprints. Some wielded flames, others bent time, and a rare few possessed abilities so strange they defied logic itself.

Among them were two boys: Kanzaki Hikaru, and Shirogane Ren.

Their story began simply.

Lifetime 1

Hikaru and Ren met at school, just two kids who clicked without effort. Their days were filled with the kind of carefree joy only childhood allowed- playing ball in empty fields, racing toy cars down winding sidewalks, dreaming of piloting planes and commanding trains.

But childhood never lasts forever.

Ren’s 18th birthday arrived like any other day. Until it wasn’t. Without warning, without reason, he was gone. Dead.

Hikaru, frozen forever at 17, was left behind, grief-stricken but haunted by a strange certainty:
That he would see Ren once again. His best friend since childhood. He wouldn't have died just like that, not before he finally told Hikaru what his ability was.

Something about the situation, Hikaru truly believed that, even if it took all of eternity.

Lifetime 2

Years passed before Hikaru found him again, alive, 17, just like before. He looked a little bit different than before, but who wouldn't recognize that head of white and eyes so green?

Their reunion was strange but joyful, as though fate had hit the reset button on their lives. Friendship sparked easily, reigniting into a bond stronger than ever. They were the duo who laughed at bad jokes, waged fierce arcade battles, and cooked up questionable meals just to prove who was better at it.

This time, Hikaru hoped they had all the time in the world.

But on Ren’s 18th birthday, death came for him once again. His skull was shattered by a glass bottle in his own home, having teetered and fallen onto his head as he walked under the shelf. That day, his house was filled with shrieks when his mother found him on the ground hours later.

Lifetimes 3–10

So the cycle began.

Lifetime after lifetime, Hikaru searched for Ren. He always found him, always a teenager, never younger, and never without that same inexplicable pull that drew them together like magnets.

“Why are you so bad at basketball?” Hikaru teased during one life, effortlessly stealing the ball with reflexes sharpened over centuries.

“Maybe because you’re cheating?” Ren shot back, grinning.

Their lives were filled with camaraderie, teasing, and absurd competitions to see who could eat the most ramen or pull the dumbest all-nighter. They were, in every sense, the bestest of friends.

On each of Ren's 18th birthday, his deaths got more and more absurd, as if he was truly destined to die with no exceptions.

Hikaru lived through it all, through all the funerals. He always sat a row behind Ren's family, and each time, not a single tear shed. Though it never got easier for him.

Lifetime 11

This time, Hikaru searched for over a century. The world, though it didn't change, continued to hold generations and generations of people, yet Ren was nowhere to be found. Had something broken the cycle? Had Ren been reborn in a place Hikaru could never reach? 

He wandered the world. Maybe Ren had finally been reincarnated as a new person, and Hikaru would never know. Or he was in a whole different country. He wondered, entering a local cafe on a random morning on his way to work at that office he applied to last week. 

His eyes widened as he found what he had been searching for all this time, sitting in a small café, sipping iced coffee through a straw.

Ren looked up and met his eyes, lids curved in amusement.

"Took you long enough."