Kenji Nomura was an ordinary man.
He was swayed by crowded trains in the morning, faced computer screens all day, and carried convenience store bags home at night. He had no special talents, no pedigree to boast of. To those around him, he was merely a part of the world’s background—a man simply fulfilling the duties required to survive another day.
However, Nomura possessed the power to “rewrite the world.”
It was the ability to manipulate the probabilities of collapsing phenomena when they were unobserved, converging the world into a state where it was “not broken.”
This ability came with a cruel, physics-based constraint:
“When an event is being observed, it becomes fixed, and the power cannot manifest.”
The Observer Effect of quantum mechanics.
The moment someone casts a gaze upon it, the world that was flickering as “multiple possible states” collapses into a single “determined reality.” Whether it is the lens of a camera or the human eye capturing a target, the event is locked as “the reality right here, right now,” refusing to be rewritten.
When being watched, Nomura regresses into a mere “commoner.”
The gaze of the public—the very act of observation—locks things in place, binding the world to the inescapable results of history. It is the branding of an irreversible past.
Each time the judgment of observation falls, the margins of “possible futures” are shaved away from the world, and events are painted over with a single “correct answer.” The place where a gaze rests transforms into a “cage of determination,” rejecting a fluid future.
When trapped within that cage, Nomura regresses into a “commoner.” And a human commoner begins to harbor the inescapable noise of “profit” and “fear” within their thoughts—deterministic noise that obstructs the manifestation of his true power.
“Will I be praised if I do this?”
“What is in it for me?”
Even those noises become fragments of determined reality, invading his consciousness and forming an inescapable wall that hinders his ability.
That is why Nomura lived his life thoroughly as a “transparent man.”
One night, while walking near a deserted construction site in the city, the scream of an old crane wire pierced the air. Tens of tons of steel beams began to collapse.
There was no one around. Nomura dove toward the spot, hiding in the shadows.
He thrust out his fingertips, and the world “wavered.”
With a roar, the falling steel beams froze just centimeters from his palm, their outlines blurring like afterimages. It wasn’t a simple stop of time; it was the result of Nomura forcibly inserting the probability of a “safe landing” into a “cloud of probability” where every possible falling pattern overlapped.
Nomura held that fluctuation steady, quietly but firmly fixing the surrounding space.
The steel beams landed slowly, leaving no scars on the ground.
Furthermore, he moved by weaving through “instant blind spots.”
In a bustling nightlife district, a car with failed brakes headed toward a crowd. Everyone screamed and fled in panic. Nomura struck through a mere moment of “observational void”—the split second people’s eyes turned away from the car—and manipulated the “cloud of probability.”
To the onlookers, the truck seemed to make a “whoosh” sound as it veered off course. Nomura had neutralized the misfortune without leaving any log of his existence.
And so, he continues to repair “everyday life.”
During his lunch break, Nomura secretly fixes a broken faucet in the breakroom at a timing when his boss is out of sight. In the “void” where no consciousness intervenes, he uses the power dwelling in his fingertips to converge the distorted metal into its original shape. Seconds after his boss passes by, the faucet is restored to perfect condition.
Nomura held a sense of pride—or rather, a deep resignation akin to it—in this lonely life of “debugging” the world.
(…In the end, nobody knows. How much of this world’s bugs I fixed today.)
One rainy night, Nomura sat on a park bench, soaked to the bone.
Every time he used his ability, his spirit and body were subjected to intense exhaustion. To resist the determined flow of the world is equivalent to defying the laws of the universe.
(…Nobody knows. How much misfortune I’ve shouldered for others.)
Suddenly, a small shadow appeared at the edge of his vision.
It was a young child. The child was shivering, huddled against the cold with wet hands.
Nomura instinctively switched his “ability” OFF.
He returned to being just a tired man. As long as he was being watched, he could not rewrite the laws of physics.
Nomura took off his jacket and draped it over the child’s shoulders with trembling hands.
“…Good job today,” the child whispered.
Nomura was surprised and looked up.
“Ah… yeah. Good job.”
The child stared intently at Nomura’s face.
“Everyone was saying you were a really good person. At the station stairs just now.”
Nomura’s heart leaped.
(The station stairs…? When was that…?)
“An old lady was struggling with heavy bags on the stairs. There were so many people around, but everyone just walked by with faces that said, ‘Someone should help her,’ but nobody actually stopped.”
Nomura held his breath for a moment.
At that time, there had been a crowd at the station stairs. Everyone was “observing” the old lady’s suffering.
And that very observation was what was fixing the cruel reality.
“Someone else will do it.”
“I don’t want to stand out by doing it myself.”
The chain of observation—the gaze of others—was fixing people’s actions into a state of “merely watching.” When eyes gather, events are fixed, and they are bound to an inescapable reality. Everyone accepts that “determined result” as a bystander, and the world stagnates.
The “corrections” Nomura had been performing in secret flashed through his mind.
He had been saving the world only in the darkness where no one could see him, manipulating probabilities. But was that ultimately nothing more than a “self-indulgent debug” severed from anyone’s consciousness?
The “determined despair” of indifference, bound by the cage of sight.
He, who had hidden to keep the world from breaking, was now facing this question.
From this desperate reality, fixed by observation, how could he save anyone?
A small fire lit deep within Nomura’s chest.
He was slipping through the “fixation.”
Not by rewriting physical laws through his ability, but by a different method—breaking through the wall of observation by deliberately standing there as a “mere human,” facing the gaze and the risk.
Even if his power was sealed by observation and he regressed into a “powerless commoner,” that single moment of goodwill could shake the frozen cloud of probability and pierce a new possibility.
Nomura looked at his trembling fingertips. Right now, he had no power left to rewrite the laws of physics. Within observation, he was just a “commoner wavering between profit and fear.”
Yet, right now, he felt a certain tangible sensation.
The child nodded with satisfaction, handed him a small umbrella, and ran off.
Nomura was left alone in the rain again.
His ability remained OFF.
However, his palms felt strangely warm.
He stood up and pulled his wet jacket back onto his shoulders.
Tomorrow, too, he will go to places where no one is looking as an “ordinary man.”
To the “cracks” of the world, where no one notices and no one records.
The “true power” he uses is, as always, only when no one is watching.
But the “unconditional kindness” he shows at times is quietly, but surely, unraveling the chains of determined reality.
Nomura began to walk into the night rain with his usual face—one that was slightly proud, and slightly sad, and entirely ordinary.