by Ryukiro
(Prequel side story of Malicious Compliance — The Necromancer Who Hated His Script. Everything in this story is canon up until the events right before the reincarnation. The final act explores a "What If" scenario: what could have happened if the misunderstanding had been resolved before it was too late.) ~ Kaito Yamashiro was eighteen when a phone call at 6:24 p.m. took everything from him. No parents. No university. No future. Just an insurance payout he refused to touch and a job fixing other people's wiring, because at least circuits had the decency to either work or not. He had only one friend, a silent apartment, and a routine built entirely around not feeling anything. Then a foreign girl laughed in an izakaya, and the light switched back on. This is the story of how Kaito Yamashiro learned to love, and what it cost him when he forgot to ask whether love, like electricity, follows the path of least resistance even when that path leads somewhere you can't come back from. — (A chapter every two days)
