In countless parallel universes, there are countless earths, and there is a very irrelevant place among them. And the story I want to tell takes place there.

In this world, at the end of the 20th century, a force broke all the barriers of nations, national borders, and belief with absolute force, making all mankind become subjects before they could react. Anyone who dared to resist was wiped out within two years.

Human beings completed the unification of power of the entire planet in 2000. The concept of national boundaries has no longer existed on the earth since this year. The original "county" has been renamed as "prefecture" or "county", and only the names of each city have been retained.

A word that has not been mentioned for a long time has reappeared on the stage of history - the Emperor.

For better or worse, at least in this universe, the Earthlings are not finally united in the form of a federation, but through the form of an empire.

In fact, from a long-term perspective, if a group of monkeys, insects, or even a group of robots invade from outside the Milky Way after several years, the Earth Empire will definitely be more combat-effective than the Earth Federation.

Of course, this will not happen in this story.

Things will start in December 2100.

Sakurano Mansion is one of the smallest "palaces" in the world. The empire was originally planning to subscribe it to Long County, but considering that its geographical location was on the sea and there have been frequent earthquakes and tsunamis since ancient times, there is a volcano on it that is alive, so it is possible to sink into the sea one day. The jurisdiction of Long County is already very broad, so the upper class of the empire finally decided to set Sakurano Mansion as a "palace".

In the winter of this year, on the streets of Hokkaido, a boy was running wildly, and the cold air in the morning shaved like a knife on his face.

He is neither tall nor short, neither fat nor thin, with the public face and glasses on the bridge of his nose as thick as the bottom of two beer bottles. He is wearing a black school uniform and a shabby schoolbag on his shoulders. From the sideburns to the wind and buckles to the legs of his trousers, he can't pick out any problems. He is a typical good student.

But this good student was late again.

"Oh, Ikeda Jun, I came here sweating profusely today. Okay, sit down quickly." The teacher who said this was Matsuo, a middle-aged man with a bald face. Ikeda's class teacher taught mathematics.

This is a very good school, and it is also ranked among the top high school in Sakuranobu High School. However, compared with the aristocrats and royal families, it is just not worth mentioning.

Because Ikeda lives in a remote place, he has to catch a bus every morning to go to school on time. Once he missed this bus, Ikeda had to run for about 40 minutes before he could get to school. So although he worked very hard, he would always be late for several times in a month for various reasons.

Matsuo is a snob, and Ikeda is the kind of poor student he despised very much. He often embarrassed him in public with the excuse of Ikeda's small mistakes. Fortunately, Matsuo seemed in a good mood today. He did not further humiliate Ikeda for fun, but continued to teach his class.

This also made Ikeda feel relieved. He rushed to his seat, put his schoolbag gently, and took out his textbook.

Because of the lateness, the first class ended more than ten minutes after Ikeda sat down.

Matsuo didn't talk much nonsense, and walked out of the classroom with the ringtone of the end of get out of class, but when he arrived at the door, he turned his face and looked at Ikeda with an unkind look. Ikeda clearly saw a sneer from Matsuo's mouth.

"Hey, wet mosquito coils, I have something to tell you, come to the rooftop." The squad leader Miura is a tall and strong fat man with a wealthy family. I heard that his father is the director of a large hospital, so the snobbish Matsuo made Miura, who had average academic performance, be the class monitor.

"Oh, okay..." Ikeda did not react to the term "wet mosquito coil", because other boys and even girls in the class usually call him that. Mosquito coil refers to his ridiculous glasses, and the wet mosquito coil actually means that it cannot be used, so this nickname is basically equivalent to "waste".

Because I am going to high school, there are few bad boys in the true sense, but guys like Miura who bully others are spread all over the universe. From kindergarten to entering society, only such people can be seen everywhere.

Ikeda has always been bullied by Miura. In addition to running errands, he also has to do homework on his behalf. Teachers like Matsuo naturally turn a blind eye.

After arriving at the rooftop, Miura didn't say a word and inexplicably beat Ikeda. He was very heavy and did not care about his qualities. Ikeda just curled up in a ball with his head held in his arms throughout the process, with no sign of fighting back because of anger, and just gritted his teeth and endured it.

Maybe I got used to it. As soon as I entered the school, I was deliberately beaten by seniors in the seniors. Later, even the seniors in the grade also regarded him as the best target to bully. Ikeda, who is now a second-year high school student, is just a useless fool in the eyes of the freshmen, and has not been regarded as a senior at all.

The class bell rang, Miura stopped and turned around and wanted to leave.

"Why?" Ikeda struggled to squeeze out such a sentence.

"Ah?" Miura spat and replied as if nothing had happened: "If you want to give a reason, it might be boring. I haven't beaten up for a long time."

The door leading to the rooftop was closed, and Ikeda still fell to the ground, and his self-esteem might be more severe than the bruises on his body.

Maybe he should cry at this time, but he could no longer cry.

Students like Ikeda seem to have the only way to transfer schools or commit suicide.

Unfortunately, he did not have the conditions to transfer to school and did not have the courage to commit suicide.

All he can do is continue this kind of life.

…………

The evening of December 10th.

The bell rang for school. For Ikeda, every day of high school life is like a year, and when he gets home, he has to do a lot of housework, because the father of a gambler and drunkard is drunk all day long, and usually does three things: drinking and showing off the lower limit, beating his son to practice physical fitness, and drooling and sleeping.

Ikeda walked through the familiar streets with weak steps. The whole world was extremely dark for him, and every moment of his life was like torment.

Gradually reaching a remote location, Ikeda suddenly stopped, looked at a shop on the roadside, and said to himself: "Is there a bookstore here originally?" He vaguely remembered that there was just a vacant lot this few days ago, but now there is a single-story building worth dozens of square meters in front of him. The sign reads "BOOKS". The window facing the street is full of books, making it difficult to see the situation in the house.

Maybe it was out of curiosity, or simply because I didn't want to return to his dirty home too early, Ikeda pushed the door open and went in.

After entering the house, it makes people feel that the space here seems to be larger than outside. The layout of the room is generally cross-shaped. In addition to the bookshelves around, several tables that are put together are piled with books, and books are also piled with books on the corners of the walls and on the ground. There is almost no passage for people to stand and walk, and the space is occupied by piles of randomly placed books.

The unique smell of paper and leather filled the air and it was not bad. Walking a few steps in, you can see an office desk. A man sat on the sofa chair behind the table. He looked 20 or 30 years old, with messy hair, wearing a black shirt and suit, with an open collar, looking unkempt.

Tianyi did not respond to the customer's visit, and he still looked at the book with one hand, while in the other hand he held a spoon, slowly stirring a cup of coffee on the table.

"That...boss... may I ask..." Ikeda instinctively wanted to ask where this bookstore came from.

Tianyi didn't let him finish his words, and his eyes didn't leave the book he was holding. He just put down the spoon, raised his arm lazily, pointed his finger at the three rows of bookshelf in the corner of his left and said, "There is the thing you want to see."

Ikeda felt that the situation in front of him was indescribable, but he still walked towards the rows of bookshelf dullly. For some reason, he did as if the boss's simple words could lead him to resolve all the doubts in his heart.

When he got there, Ikeda discovered that all the books on this bookshelf had black book covers and could not judge the content from the appearance alone, so it was irrelevant to pick up any of them. So he took off a book from the bookshelf, turned his head to look at Tianyi, and he was still reading books and drinking coffee there, completely ignoring himself.

"What a weird guy..." Ikeda murmured in a low voice and opened the book in his hand.

The first page is a piece of white paper. When you turn to the second page, the title of the book is written in the center.

Those are three words written in green ink that makes people feel uncomfortable to look at - Ikeda Hok.

"My name?" Ikeda instantly got goosebumps and thought to himself: "Is it a coincidence? a prank? a TV station's prank program?"

He turned a few pages back. Except for the title, the other words were in a regular black printed font, but the content almost scared Ikeda to scream.

"You should die if you are like your dad."

"Mipune bastard, I really want to push him down from the upper floor."

"I want to be a popular boy like Fujita."

Ikeda quickly flipped through the content, his face gradually filled with fear and shame. Until he read about two-thirds of the entire book, the content behind it was interrupted, and only dozens of pages of white paper remained.

And the last two lines of words are: "Is it a coincidence? a prank? a TV station's prank program?" and "How is it possible?!"

At this time, Tenichi finally put the book in his hand, took a sip of coffee, then turned to look at Ikeda: "Put the book back, let's talk about a deal."

Ikeda trembled and hesitated, instinctively fearing the incomprehensible things, and not wanting to let go of the book full of his "voice" and made him struggle and not do as Tianyi said for a while.

Tianyi sighed: "Put down the book and come over, otherwise I will chop you up and feed it to the pig."

Ikeda compromised, he put the book back on the bookshelf, remembered the position firmly, and then walked nervously towards Tianchi's desk.

Tianyi showed a fake smile that was too fake: "Ikeda-kun, feeding pigs is a joke, don't mind, the content you saw just now is free, but only once." Tianyi raised the book he had been reading in his hand since Ikeda entered the room until now, and the book also had a black bookcase wrapped in appearance.
Chapter completed!