The asphalt was cold, but my mind was strangely calm.
"I'm dying..."
My hands trembled slightly, stained with the blood soaking from my side. I tried to lift my head and saw the van disappearing at the end of the alley. I couldn't help but let out a bitter smile. At least, because I stepped in, she had time to jump away and run.
"This is what I get for trying to be a manga hero..."
What a cliché way to go. I always thought my first major injury would be at a national tournament, under the dojo lights, not in a filthy alley at the hands of thugs who didn't even know how to hold a weapon.
"They got away... and I'm stuck here."
"Call an ambulance! Quick, there's a kid down!" a voice echoed from afar.
I closed my eyes. I didn't feel fear, just a deep sense of "what a waste." The only thing I was truly good at was swinging a shinai. I had spent years perfecting an art that, in the moment of truth, only served to buy a few seconds.
"Sorry, old man..." I thought of my father. "I guess I'm heading out early to see Mom."
"Come on, kid, stay with us! Don't close your eyes!" Someone knelt beside me and pressed down on my wound. The pulsing pain made my entire body shudder.
"Resist! Keep breathing!"
"Shut up... Just let me rest in peace..." I thought, as darkness began to devour the edges of my vision. "I don't want to feel this anymore..."
Suddenly, the noise of the city and the pain vanished. It wasn't the death I expected. I found myself in a white, infinite void, facing a presence I couldn't define.
"This soul is perfect... you will help me."
"Who... who said that?" I asked, though I wasn't sure if I even had a mouth to speak.
"I was called... the Human God. Aethel, in a world where I no longer exist."
"The Human God? Aethel?" Confusion washed over me. "Wasn't your name Jesus? Or... just God. What is this place?"
"No. I am a God of another world, though I no longer belong to it." The voice flickered like a candle in the wind. "I fell... because of the one who calls himself a god."
"...Hitogami."
"Eh? Hitogami?" That name... it felt familiar. It came from some corner of my memory, something I had read or heard before. "Wait, that sounds like—"
"I don't have much time left," the voice interrupted. "I am only a fragment of what I once was. Listen well: I will give you something to help you. It is the only thing I managed to snatch from him... help me defeat the false god."
I felt as if something entered my chest, but it went directly into my soul.
"As long as the fragment of Aethel exists in your soul, no god shall touch your mind... nor bend the course of your destiny."
"I think I'm confused now... Hey! Wait!"
But Aethel did not answer. The white void shattered into a thousand pieces, and the sensation of freefall returned until everything went black.
.....
Year 405...
The darkness faded quickly. I began to feel a warmth pressing against my entire body.
"Koka! Koka, Vivia!" (Push! Push, Vivia!) a man shouted. His voice was hoarse and loud.
When I finally emerged, I could breathe again. I forced my eyes open, and realized I was in a place that looked quite poor—or rather, like I had traveled back in time.
"So, I'm alive again..." I said in my mind.
Everyone in the room went silent.
"Kapa...? Iavap dapa?" (Why...? Why isn't he crying?) an exhausted woman's voice asked.
The man holding me was trembling. He looked at me with total confusion. I saw myself in the reflection of a water bucket: I had hair as red as blood and bright blue eyes. I looked nothing like them.
A boy of about 6 years old peeked through the door. He pointed at me with a dirty finger.
"Aike kapa? Vovua kapa raia dapa!" (Is that my brother? His hair is weird!) he shouted in surprise.
My father reluctantly dropped me into my mother's arms. His gaze shifted from surprise to fury. He approached her threateningly.
"Vivia... Iiavap vovua dapa?" (Vivia... whose child is this?)
The woman began to cry and swear her innocence, but I couldn't understand the context well. The man put his hand on his knife. I could deduce one thing: he thought she had cheated on him because I looked like neither of them.
"Great," I thought. "I've just been born and I think my own father already wants to kill us."
The man stared at us for a minute longer; his grip on the knife loosened. He left without a word, nearly knocking over the boy in his way. He slammed the door hard on his way out.
Only the woman's sobbing could be heard.
"I'm sorry..." I sighed mentally.
Months passed since I was born. I'm not sure how many, but I estimate I'm nearly a year old. The atmosphere in the cabin didn't improve, but at least there was no blood.
My mother, Vivia—I knew her name because my "father" called her that—always watched over me with a strange look. She would stare at me for a long time in silence, as if trying to understand what I really am.
My "father," Somav, was another story. He hardly spoke to me. He limited himself to bringing back hunt meat and glaring at me with contempt from the corner of the table. To him, I wasn't his son; I was a constant doubt. Not the best environment to raise a baby—well, if I were a normal one.
I won't lie: I felt lonely. At the end of the day, humans are social beings, and rejection from your own family hurts.
Then there was the boy, my brother Somar. He was more direct: he would simply hit or push me when no one was looking. But something strange happened: I didn't feel pain. "Is this something 'He' gave me?"
Throughout this time, I kept turning over the name I heard before being born. I knew I recognized it from somewhere. Then, one day, while lying down staring at the ceiling, I remembered...
I remembered the novel I couldn't finish reading because of my Kendo competitions. That story about a guy who reincarnated in a world of magic... Mushoku Tensei.
But I still needed concrete proof. I needed to see magic with my own eyes; if I saw that, I would confirm it completely.
"I already told you he is yours!" my mother screamed from the other room.
"How do you expect me to believe you, you damn slut?" my father roared back.
There they were again, fighting. Everything had worsened since the day he came home drunk and hit my mother for the first time. I wanted to do something—I really wanted to stand up and teach him a lesson—but this baby body wouldn't let me.
Despite that strange resistance to blows, I still didn't have the strength or size to move well. I simply couldn't do anything, and it frustrated me.
Luckily, the neighbors helped keep him in check when things got too ugly, but that brought another problem. Since Somar saw his father taking it out on Mom, he started taking it out on me.
Every time my father stomped out of the house in a rage, Somar would come to my crib with a nasty look.
"It's your fault they're always fighting," he would say before punching me in the stomach or face.
I just grit my teeth. It didn't hurt physically—my body was hard as a rock—but it hurt my soul to see what this family had become.
"Just wait, you stupid brother," I thought while taking his hits without crying. "Just wait until I can walk."
....
Two years have passed since I reincarnated. My waist and legs were finally developed enough to walk. I was finally beginning to understand my parents' conversations; at least the fighting had subsided a bit.
My mother seems to have accepted me. After all, she couldn't hate me after I gave her the "Puss in Boots face"; it was my master technique to ensure at least one person in the house didn't hate me.
I've already confirmed I'm in that world. Mom mentioned the name of the place where we live: Buena Village. It was too much of a coincidence for it to be the same village where the protagonist of that novel reincarnated.
In all this time, I've been thinking a lot. When you spend months as a baby, you have no choice but to reflect. If this was a new life given to me by that god, why not enjoy it? I wanted to fulfill what he asked of me to thank him, but I also wanted to try the new things of this world: magic... or see how much I could improve my sword technique here.
The first thing needed to survive in this world was learning to read, but there was a problem. I searched and searched all over the cabin, but I didn't find a single book. It was clear: my family was illiterate, and paper didn't exist in this house.
I lay on the floor, frustrated.
"It seems learning to read will be much harder than I thought..." I sighed, looking at the ceiling beams.
"What are you doing, you freak?"
Eh? I looked up from the floor. It was Somar. He was looking at me with that mocking smile I hated so much, holding a heavy bucket in his hands.
"Don't tell me it's that..." I thought, but I didn't even have time to move.
In the next moment, a wave of cold water crashed directly onto my face, soaking me completely. The water got into my nose and ears, leaving me breathless for a second.
I blinked several times while spitting out the water and wiping my face with my small hands.
"Okay... he's crossing the line now..."
I heard Somar's laughter as he dropped the empty bucket on the floor. He was used to me staying quiet and taking it, but today I wasn't in the mood to play the helpless baby. My patience had run out at the same rate the water hit the floor.
I stood up slowly, ignoring the dripping from my soaked clothes. My feet planted firmly on the wet wood.
Without realizing it, I had left a footprint in the floor, as if it had sunk under my weight...
I just stared him straight in the eyes, with that look that made even my father back away.
"If there are no books in this house, I have nothing to do here," I decided in that instant. "It's time to go out and find my own path."
I brushed past Somar, giving him a shoulder shove that made him stumble even though he was much bigger than me. Without looking back, I walked straight to the cabin door. It was time to see Buena Village and find someone who wasn't an idiot.
But before I could cross the threshold, my mother stood in front of me.
"What happened to you, Kael? It was Somar again, wasn't it?" she said worriedly as she picked me up, feeling my soaked clothes.
Her hands were warm, but I just wanted to get down. She turned toward the kitchen and shouted loudly:
"Somarrrr! What have I told you about bothering your brother!"
"Mom..." I interrupted her. She looked at me surprised; it wasn't common for me to try to start a conversation.
"Yes, Kael?"
"Can I go out?" I asked as clearly as I could.
"What are you saying? You're still a baby, you can't go out alone," she replied, pressing me against her chest.
Before I could insist, the front door swung open. It was my father, Somav, entering with his bow over his shoulder and a scowl on his face.
"Why don't you let him out?" he spat with a voice full of poison. "It would be better if he got lost out there. That way he'd stop causing us problems."
My mother eventually left the room, leaving me alone with my thoughts.
I sighed. The only thing left for me to do was what I knew best from my previous world: sword practice. But before that, I had to strengthen this body.
"Mmmm... I think it's best to wait until I'm five for the heavy training," I told myself, evaluating my small hands.
For now, the ideal thing would be to swing something that resembled a sword. I looked around the room for anything useful.
"Bingo!"
Underneath Somar's bed, I found one of those sticks he used to bring in to bother me. I grabbed it and gave it a couple of practice swings. It was crude, but it worked.
And so, two more years passed. I trained in secret, swinging that stick every night until I turned 5.
The only thing I noticed in those two years was that my strength grew significantly—not disproportionately, but much more than when I was this age in my previous life. However, I also started noticing something different, as if something was trying to flow through me, but I didn't know how to let it out.
"Could this be Touki?" I wondered. "The thing mentioned in the novel... but aren't you supposed to feel this only when you reach Saint rank or something? I don't remember the ranks well, but this definitely isn't normal for a kid."
Two months after turning 5, Mom finally let me go out alone. Previously, I could only go out with her; at first, people looked at us strangely and whispered about my appearance, but over time they had calmed down.
By the way, I also heard talk of a blue-haired mage who helped the villagers with the crops... I assume that's Roxy, one of the heroines of this world.
I thought I might see her to ask for at least one magic lesson, but in all the trips with my mother, I never found her...
Back to the present
I was walking down the dirt path in a white shirt and black pants. My appearance was, to say the least, extremely striking: fire-red hair and bright blue pupils. I had the face of a very handsome boy, a little noble lost in a village of mud.
Basically, I looked like Reinhard from *Re:Zero*. I'm not complaining about being good-looking, but I could have been... less noticeable.
Even so, I greeted the people passing by with a smile. I had worked hard to earn a good reputation; I went from being the "boy of doubtful origin" to being seen as a kind, polite, and strangely mature kid. In a small village, a good face and better manners can quash almost any gossip.
I walked away from the houses, looking for a quiet place to practice my stances. Walking a bit further, I found a lonely hill with a large tree standing against the sky.
"This place feels familiar..." I muttered, feeling a sharp sense of déjà vu.
Suddenly, the air whistled with force, and a ball of water came flying from the top of the hill straight toward my face. My combat instincts, though rusted from years of being trapped in an infant's body, sparked like a flame. With great effort and a sharp movement, I managed to twist my torso to dodge the projectile, which ended up hitting a trunk behind me with a dull thud.
"What the hell?!" I exclaimed, regaining my balance.
"I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!"
I heard a child's voice filled with panic. At the top of the hill, a girl appeared, a bit taller than me, with short green hair and slightly pointed ears that trembled with fear. She held her hands out in front of her, still wrapped in a slight trace of moisture.
In that instant, the memory of the novel snapped into reality, and a name immediately came to my mind.
Sylphy.
End of Chapter