Kenji Yamaguchi's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

Kenji spent the rest of the week dismantling what he'd built. The posters came down first, rolled carefully and stored in boxes. The map followed, then the fan letters, each one handled with care but removed all the same. He kept the lights on and left the door unlocked, but the walls grew bare. He needed answers, not decoration. That meant going back to where it actually started—not his first encounter in Ichiban City, but the one nobody knew about. The crater was still there when he arrived, three hours south by train in his old neighborhood. Asphalt had buckled outward in jagged chunks, forming a ring around a bowl of bare earth. The city had fenced it off years ago and never repaired it. Kenji stood at the edge, remembering how he'd hidden behind a vending machine while something massive tore through the street. He'd been eleven. No magical girl had come that time—the creature just left. He pulled out his phone and took a photo of the crater, then another of the bent fence, the faded caution tape. This was the real beginning. If he wanted his headquarters to mean something, he couldn't build it on highlights and heroism. He had to start with what actually happened when nobody came to save you.