The Apprentice (CoTE x LoTM)

Kiyotaka—no, Kael—paused, his eyes scanning the room. He mentally adjusted to the bizarre circumstances, quickly evaluating his options. Survival, he determined, required a straightforward assessment: resources, limitations, the necessities. The first thing's first.

He reached into his pockets. The coarse fabric of the trousers he now wore was all too revealing. The rough, worn material gave him a lot more insight than he'd hoped. Kael Montclair wasn't exactly sitting on a gold mine. The reality of Kael's life was anything but glamorous. 
His father, also a dockworker, was a tough man with hands like iron and a heart even harder—an unfortunate genetic trait that Kael had inherited. His mother had died when Kael was just a child, and his memories of her were few, mostly a whisper in the back of his mind. His younger sister was the only family he had left, and between the two of them, they scraped by with what little Kael's father earned. There wasn't much space for tenderness or joy in such a circumstance.
As a boy, Kael learned early that in East Borough's gray world, there was no room for hope. Life wasn't about dreams—it was about getting by. Those towering factories, their relentless belching of smoke, and the skies perpetually marred with soot, were his only constants. The city was a machine, grinding the working class down without remorse.
Schooling hadn't been an option. Kael's early education was all about manual labor. The old man had taught him work, grit, and how to endure. When Kael's father's health took a dive, it was up to him to pick up the slack, stepping into the dockyards before his teenage years had even fully settled. The work was brutal and monotonous. Hauling crates, loading ships, untangling ropes—it didn't require intelligence. It just required stamina, something Kael had in abundance. But no matter how hard he worked, there was always a limit. No advancement. No change. Just another day of toil.
And Kael had accepted this. He'd never dreamed of wealth, never expected a rise above his station. Just like his father before him, he'd fade into the background of this city. He'd be a part of the invisible men who kept things running—unknowable, unimportant. His relationships had been few, each one bound more by circumstance than any meaningful connection.
But something had always bothered him. A curiosity, perhaps. Something he couldn't name. There had to be more to the world than this—it was a thought that had circled his mind ever since he was old enough to understand the disparity between the city's riches and those like him, to witness their grand houses as he trudged through the muck of his days.
As Kiyotaka continued to mull over Kael's life, his brow furrowed as one event suddenly popped up inside his head.
...again with a book?
It was a hazy memory. The book had a black hardcover, he remembered that much. Kael had read it not long after his death. But beyond the cover, everything was a blur. He couldn't recall exactly where he'd found it. Where it had gone. What he'd read. 
Was his death related to it? And more importantly, to my transmigration here? Why? How? And just what kind of authority could create that effect?
"So many mysteries," he mumbled, sighing. 
What kind of world have I stumbled into...? 
Kiyotaka couldn't help but wonder, rubbing his forehead to ease the strain growing in his mind. There were too many tiny details lingering just out of his reach, and his brain was struggling to wrap around it all. There had to be a careful way to navigate this, given how things seemed to be affecting him already.
With another sigh, he returned to the task at hand: searching for anything useful on his person.
His fingers slid into the left pocket of the trousers, and after a moment, they brushed against something that felt... oily? He pulled it out—wrapped in a grimy cloth was a small bundle. Unwrapping it, he found a few crumpled coins—a single solitary soli, five pennies, and another stray penny that decided it was far more fun to roll to the bottom of the pocket, where it gleamed innocently as if mocking his current plight.
Well, that told him something—his financial state, at least, was enlightening. After giving the coins an appraising glance, Kiyotaka realized the local currency system was like a riddle. Like peeling layer after layer, each more nonsensical than the last.
The system, as he pieced together, was just convoluted. Gold pounds, the ultimate symbol of wealth, were paper-backed by gold reserves. Nothing too surprising there. They were printed with elegant designs, too—each note featuring a reigning monarch, meticulously engraved, like something from a portrait session in a royal art gallery.
One single pound didn't actually mean "one pound", of course. No, that pound was equivalent to twenty soli. And it was going to get more complicated.
There were the soli—the "middle-tier" currency. These were either coins or paper-based. It took ten of the lowest-ranked coins— twelve pennies— to equal one soli. He couldn't look at that without feeling a low hum of frustration—who designed this monstrosity?
But the pennies. Now those were something else. Small. Frightening. Definitely not something one would want to find lying around. After all, the pennies didn't scream stability—just fragility. Barely enough to buy bread or survive the next meal. In his hand, they didn't represent an economy. They were, in the most painful sense, a reminder of the stark disparity between the middle and lower class— his class.
One penny is equal to 64 to 85 Yen in Japan, so his reserves is between 1,152 yen and 1,530 yen right now, considering his total money is 18 pennies.
Not bad, all things considered. Far better than the dusting of coins he had imagined when first pulling them out. It wasn't exactly wealth, but with that much, he could probably manage to survive a bit, at least make it to the next day without starving, maybe buy some half-decent food... so long as he didn't get too many extra eyes on him, the burden of this currency system hanging around his neck like a millstone.
Kiyotaka's fingers closed around the crumpled copper penny as he analyzed the image it painted of this kingdom. The kingdom's structure mirrored the wealth disparity; gold pounds sat comfortably in the hands of the untouchables at the top, soli filled the pockets of those who got by, and pennies—pennies were the cold reality for the rest who simply existed, surviving day to day. What an ironic play it all was: the people with wealth, control, and power wouldn't bat an eye at such a situation, but for him, Kael Montclair's life, it was a striking contrast.
"Twelve pennies to a soli. Twenty soli to a pound," Kiyotaka muttered with a dry tone, tucking the handful of coins back into his pocket. He imagined they were more of a resignation in Kael's life—a meek acceptance of an inherited struggle. For Kael, sure, that was life. But for Kiyotaka, survival wasn't about quietly accepting what had been forced onto him—it was about calculating his way out of this labyrinthine mess with whatever resources he could find.
The kingdom, its riches, its haves and have-nots—with the number of variables already swimming in his head, it was becoming quite a lot more complicated than he had originally thought.
Time and opportunity—that was all he needed. If he could just make use of them, he might claw his way out of the pit of mediocrity that Kael Montclair had been wallowing in. A nice, noble goal.
But first things first— how far could these paltry coins stretch?
The true art of survival often lay in getting the most out of the least.
He gathered what little remained of his possessions—pitifully few, offering him pitifully few options—ah, what a thrilling beginning to an adventure this was. 
Sitting up with more purpose than he had a minute ago, "!" a hiss escaped Kael's lips as pain shot through his ribs.
The instinct to check the source was automatic, his fingers brushing against the rough, blood-soaked fabric of his shirt. Slowly, carefully, he peeled it back.
Huh.
A puncture wound, just below the ribcage. A deep one as well. A lot more disconcerting than the lovely scenery he'd just noticed.
The bleeding had slowed. That's good, he supposed. But the wound hadn't clotted—it seemed to have... regenerated? A sickly twist in his stomach accompanied the disturbing sight. It was slow, excruciatingly so, but undeniably, it was happening. The flesh twisted, pulled together, like a clumsy, tired attempt to heal.
Another mystery to be solved.
He glanced at the wound and shook his head slightly. It should've bled me out long ago. But here he was, still breathing. It's definitely better for me to not just consider the Earth's logic while facing all this situation.
He prodded the skin around the wound, feeling the tenderness and swelling, but—surprisingly—no signs of infection. No red flags to suggest that this was anything more than strange. It didn't add up. This wasn't normal. Not in the slightest.
Anyone else would've died. They had to have. But not him. No, Kael Montclair, for whatever reason, wasn't following the natural laws of biology.
Kael caught sight of a bloodstained knife nearby. That, combined with the situation, left his mind drifting into certain thoughts. Could this have been a suicide attempt? What if Kael had deliberately caused this wound, only for it to do the exact opposite of what was intended? 
His brow furrowed at the thought, but there was no time to dwell on that. There were questions—endless, intrusive ones—that could only lead to complications he didn't have the time, or the patience, to answer. Attention was something he'd learned to avoid at all costs, and getting questions was an invitation to exactly the sort of attention he didn't need. Well, for now, at least.
Kael tore off a strip from the least bloodied part of his shirt, winding it carefully around his midsection to cover the wound. The scratchy fabric burned against his raw skin, but it was a discomfort he could deal with. Nothing more important than staying out of sight.
The makeshift bandage would do for the moment.
His eyes lingered on it briefly, but the questions in his mind rushed in faster than he could unpack them. There was no point in getting bogged down by them, though.
Focus. Adapt. Assess.
That was all that mattered now. It was the only reasonable course of action until he could make sense of this twisted situation. Too many threads, too many angles, and yet... some were easier to follow than others. He'd follow after the easy ones first.
...right, I should work at the dock today.
Maybe a little power struggle for a higher rank wouldn't hurt—climbing out of this miserable pit had to start somewhere.