Name: Akito Yodaka Age: 27 Occupation: CEO of an IT startup Appearance: Black hair / 185cm / Lean build / Sharp eyes

• Born into a poor family. Started as a freelance engineer after high school and built his company through steady effort. Rose up through sheer initiative and hunger. The type who hates to lose and breaks rules.
• Smoker.
• Has been the "convenient man" for 9 years, unable to get the person he loves to look his way.
• Pure at heart.

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Prologue

Happy Ending

When I was a kid, despair was right there every morning when I woke up. Broken liquor bottles. Trash from cup noodles with leftover broth. The false eyelashes my mother, who worked in the nightlife, dropped were stuck to the tatami like caterpillars. I wore sweats with holes worn through them and wondered how to get to heaven while lying on a futon that hadn't been washed in months. I was bullied at school for being like a sewer rat, and at home, there was no place for me because my mother, abandoned by men, would have hysterics and cry.

I don't know how I managed to survive the 18 years until I met you. Having nothing, going nowhere, jumping back and forth between anger and lethargy, I somehow grew big in stature before I knew it. That day, too, I didn't want to go back to a house that felt like rotten leftovers, so I wandered aimlessly through the downtown area. I felt like if I threw myself into the loud music and lights, my hollow suicidal thoughts would be drowned out. I stood in front of a nightclub as if drawn to it, but the entrance wasn't a place a sewer rat like me was allowed to cross.

The man in black standing there looked down at me in my soot-stained T-shirt as if I were filth. He was saying something, but my head went white with shame, and my ears were ringing so loudly I couldn't hear him well.

I only understood that he was telling me to "Go home." It was obvious. I understood better than anyone that this wasn't where I belonged. Miserable. I wanted to disappear. Just as I was about to turn on my heel, a halation occurred in my dull, gray world.

"Hey," she said, cutting off the man who was about to warn me again.

It was a clear voice, as if optimized for my hearing. Before I knew it, there were white, translucent fingertips on my shoulder that looked like they knew nothing of the filth of the night streets. At the same time the man in black shrugged his shoulders in exasperation, the scent of sweet, cold perfume filled my lungs. It was a noble, violent fragrance, utterly unsuited for someone like me who lived in the gutter. You casually pulled my arm as I stood there dazed, and turned your back to the club.

It must have been a whim. I'm sure you weren't thinking of anything. Since your smooth brain under that small skull is always full of pleasure and amusement, that day must have been the same. However, that day, which was nothing more than a trivial scene in your daily life, was the best day of my life for me.

That day, the city's vulgar neon lights looked like signposts to heaven, and you were the angel leading me. The moment you smiled at me, the world of my ignorant, uneducated, foolish 18-year-old self began to shine in rose-colored hues.

It didn't take long for you to become my everything. Every time I saw you, I became obsessed with you as if my very soul were being rewritten. I started working to earn money to see you. No matter how grimy the work was, it wasn't a burden if I thought it was for you. I worked frantically because I refused to lose to the bastards who had everything from the start. The hardships were trivial.

However, no matter how much I loved you from the bottom of my heart, you never let our relationship become more than "playing at being lovers." By being eluded by you so skillfully, I grew greedier by the day. By the time I started to realize you might actually be a terrible person, it was already too late.

I had to become a man you would choose. I started a business and came to be called President. I moved out of the house I shared with my mother and into a modern apartment. I started wearing luxury watches and driving foreign cars. I can get most things I want, yet in front of you—the one thing I can't have—I turn back into a miserable brat.

"...Did you eat properly? Please realize, at least a little, that you'll die without me."

You, who are decadent, lack life skills, and do nothing but play around with men, are certainly no angel. The boy I used to be was laughing at the current me in my heart, saying, "Only the type of despair has changed."

But even if you're not an angel but a devil who pushes me into hell, what does it matter now? No matter what cataclysm occurs, you are the center of my world. If I can have you, I don't care if I sacrifice every soul in this world. Ah—