01—The Tales of Absolute Failure

Long before the name Toma Houku became infamous for the fists that left his enemies bare in his new world—

Toma was a young man whose middle name was "Absolute Failure."
And "Lucky"? A word so foreign to him it might as well have been a different language.


—One day, during sixth-grade PE class. Earth.


"Houku! Ten laps around the field for not hitting the ball!" the PE teacher barked, his voice echoing across the entire grounds.


Toma stared at the snapped baseball bat in his hands with a completely hollow expression. Behind him, his classmates were losing it.


"Pfft—Houku can't even hit a slow pitch!" one of them howled.


"He swung at nothing but air with that dead-serious face?! And broke the bat doing it! HAHAHA!"


"Bro's a natural for the school comedy sketch!"


—In the warmth of an autumn afternoon. Toma, a second-year high schooler, experienced his very first crush. Earth.


"Toma-kun..." The girl in her school uniform bowed her head deeply. "I'm so sorry. I can't return your feelings."


Toma, who had already mentally braced himself for rejection, gave a limp nod. "Oh. Okay. It's cool, Tanaka-san. I get it if I'm not really your type—"


"That's not it," she cut in quickly. "It's just... this morning, my cat died after seeing your photo on my phone."


"HUH?!"


"And... my dad got fired from his job after I told him about our plans to go out. And every single houseplant in my room wilted after I said your name out loud."


Toma stepped back, the color draining clean from his face. "Th-that's gotta be a coincidence..."


"I'm sorry, Toma-kun. But I think you might be... cursed."


—Exactly one year after graduating dead last in his high school class. Toma returned as a ronin student. Earth.


"Congratulations to all applicants for this year's University of Tokyo entrance exam! Results will now be announced in order of registration number..."


Toma stood among hundreds of hopeful applicants, his heart hammering against his ribs. Two years in a row he'd taken this exam. Two years in a row he'd swallowed the same bitter pill.


"Number 1001, Yamada Hiroshi. Number 1003, Suzuki Kenji. Number 1007, Watanabe Yuki..."


Wait. My number is 1005. Why'd they skip it?


"Number 1011, Takeda Shouji. Number 1012—"


"HOLD ON!" Toma shot his hand straight up. "Number 1005! Houku Toma!"


The announcer squinted at the paper in his hand. "Number 1005? Ah... I apologize. Your answer sheet couldn't be read by the machine. You used a 2H pencil instead of a 2B. Automatically disqualified."


The entire courtyard went dead silent. Hundreds of eyes turned toward Toma—a cocktail of sympathy and poorly suppressed laughter.


I failed the university entrance exam because of the wrong pencil. I failed because of a pencil. Toma thought, staring up at the overcast sky.


—After failing to get into university twice, Toma had no choice but to work just to keep himself alive. But no matter how hard he tried, job after job slipped through his fingers.


During his forty-seventh job interview, Toma sat ramrod straight before an interviewer whose face had gone progressively redder by the second.


"Why do you want to work at our company?!" the interviewer asked, voice strained to its limit.


Toma had his rehearsed answer locked and loaded. "I want to contribute to the company's growth, develop my skills, and—"


"You do realize this building has been on fire this whole time, right?!"


Toma turned to his right. Sure enough, black smoke was billowing from the window, and a fire alarm was screaming somewhere in the background.


"Uh... yeah?" Toma blinked in confusion.


"And you just kept going with the interview?!"


"I-I thought it was... part of the stress resilience test? Like, a pressure-under-fire type of thing...?"


The interviewer stared at him with an expression caught somewhere between awe and terror. "You're... genuinely unbelievable."

***

After the interview that ended in a full building evacuation, Toma shuffled toward the train station, completely drained. Along the way, his mind drifted back to something his late grandmother had said before she set off on her cross-country tour of Japan—on a custom chopper-style Harley she'd tuned herself.


"Never surrender, never stumble, though your life's a heap of rubble. We who wear misfortune's shackle—must live with flair, not grovel and cackle, Toma-yaro! Brand that to your bone, you rascal!" Grandma had said in that signature gravelly voice of hers, pulling on her leather jacket and a skull-printed half-helmet.


Grandma. She was the one person who never once looked at me with pity. Never called me a loser. Never wrote me off as useless. If anything, she always treated me like I was the coolest guy on the planet.


"Alright, I'm off, Toma-yaro! Keep that candy shop of mine running smooth! Slack off and I'll drill a hole through that thick skull of yours with my sniper—yahahaha!"


Vroom!


Grandma twisted the throttle like the coolest person alive and rode off, leaving Toma standing in front of the house—with exhaust smoke curling into the shape of a heart in her wake.


"Grandma... ride safe," Toma murmured quietly after her.


And then, even that prayer failed him. A week later, the call came. His grandmother—the last family he had left in the world—was gone. She'd slipped on a banana peel while filling up her tank at a gas station.


Time stopped.


Toma sat before her altar photo with glassy eyes. His body trembled quietly, like a jar straining to hold a flood pressing against it from inside.


"GRANDMAAAAA!"


And the jar shattered—right at the moment everyone else had gone, when Toma was truly, completely alone.


"I-I'm sorry! I'm so sorry! I never should've prayed for you!" His voice cracked apart, tears streaming freely as he bowed again and again before her photo.


"Because—hic—because my prayers couldn't even save you from a banana peel!"