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The story of Sinmonger formally starts! (Oof, first chapter is very long.) I will be adding translator’s footnotes as necessary. Hope they’re informative and enhance the reading experience.

Sinmonger by San Tian Liang Jiao || Book 1: Sin Is Born of the Heart

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**CONTENT WARNING: violence, suicide**

Chapter 1: The Book of Hearts

Among the countless parallel universes, there exist countless planets Earth. The story I am going to tell takes place on one of these Earths — a place of little consequence.

In this world, at the closing of the twentieth century, a force swept the globe with utter military might, shattering all boundaries of ethnicity, nationality, and faith. Before anyone could even react, the entirety of humankind had already yielded to its power, becoming its subjects. Any who dared to rebel were wiped out completely within two years’ time.

By the year 2000, humanity had accomplished the unification of planetary power. From then on, the concept of national borders no longer existed on Earth. Former countries were styled as “prefectures” or “districts” instead, and only the names of individual cities were preserved.

A piece of vocabulary that had long gone unuttered retook the stage: “emperor”.

For better or for worse, the people of Earth — in this universe, at least — came together as a collective that took not the form of a federation, but that of an empire.

Looking at it from a long-term perspective, the Earth Empire would definitely put up a better fight than the Earth Federation, if someday invaded by a group of something or the other — monkeys, insects, or even machines 1 — from a galaxy outside the Milky Way.

Of course, no such thing happens yet in this story.

Our tale begins in the December of the year 2100.

The Sakura Prefecture2 was among the smallest of the world’s prefectures. Originally, the Empire had been planning to subsume it under the Dragon District. But considering that it was geographically located in the midst of the ocean, had been long prone to earthquakes and tsunamis, and harbored an active volcano that could erupt any day and sink the place entirely, the upper echelons of the Empire decided, in the end, to establish it as an independent prefecture. The Dragon District already enjoyed jurisdiction over a vast amount of land, anyway.

In the wintertime of this year, a youth was dashing wildly down a street in Hokkaido, the cold morning air scraping like knives across his face.

He was neither tall nor short, neither skinny nor chubby. On his very average face sat a pair of coke-bottle glasses.

Dressed in black school uniform, a shabby backpack on his shoulders, he was impeccably presented from head to toe, the very image of a model student.

Yet this “model student” was tardy, once again.

“Oh, it’s Ikeda-kun. Looks like you ran over — all sweaty — again today. Well alright, sit down quickly now.” This was the advisor of Ikeda’s class3, last name Matsuo — a bald, middle-aged man who taught math.

The school was not bad. High-ranked, even, among the university-track high schools4 in the Sakura Prefecture. Certainly not to be compared to the academies attended by royalty and aristocracy, however.

Because where he lived was rather out of the way, Ikeda had to commute every morning via a bus that came very infrequently to make it to school on time. If he missed the bus, he would have to run forty minutes to get to school. Despite his efforts, there would always be a few times in the month when he would fail to catch the bus for one reason or another and arrive late to school.

Matsuo was a snob, while Ikeda was just the kind of impoverished student that he looked down upon. He would often use Ikeda’s blunders as an excuse to embarrass Ikeda in front of others. Fortunately, Matsuo seemed to be in a good mood today, and didn’t further poke fun at Ikeda for his own pleasure. Instead he continued with his lecturing.

Ikeda breathed a sigh of relief. He darted to his seat, gently put down his backpack, and took out his textbook.

Because he was late, the first class ended a little over ten minutes after Ikeda sat down.

Matsuo didn’t stick around to chat, heading for the door as soon as the bell rang. But when he got there, he turned around, and gave Ikeda a spiteful look. Ikeda saw what was undoubtedly a sneer on Matsuo’s face.

“Yo, nerd glasses5, I got something to tell you. Come up to the roof.” Class president Miura was fat, but tall and strong, and came from a wealthy family. Word had it that Matsuo made Miura class president, despite the latter’s average grades, just because Miura’s father was the director at a prominent hospital.

“Oh, okay…” Ikeda didn’t react to the nickname “nerd glasses”. That was what the other guys in his class, and even some of the girls, usually called him.

Because this was a university-track high school, there were rarely any real delinquents to be found. Yet bullies like Miura, who liked to throw their weight around, existed everywhere. From kindergartens to society at large, these kinds of personalities were not uncommon.

Ikeda was pushed around by Miura on the regular. Not only did he act as Miura’s errand boy — sometimes, he even had to write Miura’s homework for him. Matsuo, on the other hand, being the kind of teacher he was, pretended not to notice. Naturally.

Once on the rooftop, Miura didn’t say anything, and Ikeda ended up, rather inexplicably, on the receiving end of a pummeling under Miura’s merciless fists. Throughout the whole process, not once did Ikeda show any signs of striking back out of anger. He simply curled into a ball, held his head, and endured it all, teeth clenched.

Perhaps it was out of habit. Back when he first matriculated, the senpais in higher grade levels had picked on him on purpose and beaten him up; later, his peers in the same grade found him the easiest to bully as well. Even now that Ikeda was in second year, he was still a good-for-nothing dumbass in the eyes of the first years, not to be respected as a senpai.

The bell rang, signaling that it was time for class. Miura called it quits and turned to leave.

“Why?” Ikeda forced the question out with some difficulty.

“Huh?” Miura spat. Careless, he replied: “Things like reasons — I guess I’m just bored. Haven’t whooped anyone’s ass in a while.”

The door to the rooftop closed behind him. Ikeda lay on the floor still — compared to his body, covered in bruises, his ego had suffered more.

Perhaps, in this moment, he should have cried. But he was far from being able to cry anymore.

For students like Ikeda, it often seemed like there were only two options: transfer schools, or commit suicide.

Unfortunately, he had neither the resources to transfer schools, nor the guts to commit suicide.

The only thing he could do was to continue living this kind of life.

…

December 10th, late afternoon.

The bell rang for the end of class. For Ikeda, the minutes passed like hours and hours passed like days at school. And afterwards, once he got home, he still had many chores to do.

His father, who was a gambling addict as well as an alcoholic, spent every day wasted. Usually, he could be found doing one of three things: demonstrating the lower bound of human reason while roaring drunk; “exercising”, by way of handing out beatings to his son; or sleeping like a log, drool hanging from his mouth.

Ikeda dragged his feet through familiar streets. The whole world appeared to him to be colorless, hopeless. Every minute, every second of his life, was to him filled with torment.

Gradually, he made his way to a remote part of town.

He halted suddenly in front of a store by the side of the road. Staring, he mumbled to himself: “Was there a bookstore here before?”

He vaguely remembered that this place had been an empty lot just mere days ago. Yet now, before his very eyes, sat a single-storey building that took up an area of several tens of square meters. “BOOKS”, its sign read. Tomes were piled up against the windowfront, obscuring the interior of the shop.

Perhaps it was out of curiosity, or perhaps he simply didn’t want to go back to his mess of a home yet — Ikeda pushed the door open and entered.

From within, the space appeared larger than it did from the outside, and the layout roughly resembled the shape of a cross. Books were stacked on a cluster of tables in the center, as well as in corners and on the floor; the four walls of the store were book-filled shelves, as well. There was hardly anywhere to put one’s foot down, amid the chaos. Every inch of available space had been taken up by books, scattered haphazardly around.

The scent of paper and leather filled the air, distinctive, but not unpleasant. A few more steps, and one could see an office desk and the man sitting in an armchair behind it.

He looked to be in his twenties or thirties, and sported a slovenly appearance — messy hair, black suit, with a black shirt inside, the collar of which was unbuttoned.

Tianyi showed no reaction to his customer’s entrance. A book in one hand, a spoon in the other, he continued his reading, absorbed in his own world, as he slowly stirred the cup of coffee on the table.

“Um… Mister… I was wondering…” Unthinkingly, Ikeda wanted to ask how this store came to be.

TIanyi didn’t let him finish the thought. Without averting his gaze from the book on hand, he set down the spoon and pointed lazily at the three rows of shelves in the corner to his left. “You’d probably want to read the stuff over there.”

Ikeda thought that this entire situation was inexplicably strange, but he still found himself walking mechanically towards the shelves that had been pointed out to him. He didn’t know why he was following Tianyi’s directions — as if a word from this shopkeeper would lead the way in unravelling the answers to all his questions.

Only when he had made his way over to the shelves in question did Ikeda discover that all the books there were uniformly bound in black leather. It mattered little which one he picked up, since it was impossible to judge the contents of each by their covers anyway.

Thus, Ikeda took a book from the shelf at random, glancing back at Tianyi afterwards. The latter remained in his spot, reading his book, drinking coffee. He’d ignored Ikeda entirely.

“What a weird guy…” Ikeda muttered under his breath, as he flipped open the book in his hands.

The first page was blank. On the second page, a bit higher than dead center, a name was inscribed.

It was two words, written in a shade of green ink that was incredibly disconcerting to look at: “Nozomi Ikeda”.

“My name?” Immediately, Ikeda got the goosebumps. He thought to himself: Is it a coincidence? A practical joke? A TV channel’s prank show?

He turned a few more pages. Aside from the title, all the other text was in ordinary black print. But its contents nearly made Ikeda cry out in alarm.

“People like my old man should go die.”

“That bastard Miura, I really want to push him off a building.”

“I want to be a popular guy, like Fujita.”

Ikeda scanned through the book, his expression slowly transforming into one of fright, shame, and anger. The text broke off two thirds of the way through. Several tens of pages after that remained blank.

The last two lines, respectively, were: “Is it a coincidence? A practical joke? A TV channel’s prank show?”, and “How is this possible?”

At this point, Tianyi finally put down his book. He took a sip of his coffee, then turned to Ikeda: “Put the book back. Let’s make a deal.”

Ikeda trembled, hesitating. He didn’t immediately do as Tianyi asked, too busy grappling with instinctual fear of the incomprehensible, as well as other sentiments he couldn’t let go of, all towards the book that was filled with his own thoughts.

Tianyi sighed. “Put the book down and come over here, or else I’ll dice you up and turn you into pig feed.”

Ikeda acquiesced. He put the book back on the shelf, making sure to plant the memory of its location firmly in his mind, and then walked nervously to Tianyi’s work desk.

Tianyi put on a smile that couldn’t have been more fake: “Ikeda-kun, the stuff about turning you into pig feed was just a joke, don’t mind it too much. Everything you just read, you read for free, but only this once.” Tianyi held up the book he’d been reading all this time. It, too, had a cover fashioned of black leather.

“The title of this book is Kazuya Miura.” Tianyi was pleased with the expression Ikeda made in response. He continued, in a most inflammatory tone: “You can see what’s inside, so long as you do one thing for me in return.”

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Zero’s notes:

1 I believe “monkeys” is a reference to Planet of the Apes, “insects” is a reference to Zerg, and “machines” is a reference to… the Terminator franchise?

2 Yup, this is alternate Japan. And you’re about to see alternate China, a.k.a. “Dragon District”.

3 Also “head teacher” or “class teacher”. Teacher who is in charge of the administrative affairs of a class in e.g. China or Japan, where K-12 grade levels are made up of classes of fixed composition (of students). Students in the same class follow the same schedule of classes.

4 TIL: Apparently there are two kinds of high schools in real-life Japan: vocational and academic (i.e. what I’ve translated as “university-track”). The latter prepares one to take college entrance exams, while the former accommodates those who want to enter the workforce directly after high school.

5 In the original text, Ikeda’s nickname is “wet mosquito (incense) coils”, which is meant to (i) suggest that he is useless, and (ii) make fun of his glasses. Incense won’t burn when it’s wet, hence the implication that he is useless. Mosquito coils (below, left) are pretty common as mosquito repellents in Asia. Remind you of something?

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