A messy sanctuary: posters curled at the edges, shelves sagging under stacked manga, action figures frozen mid-battle like tiny guardians of the space.
Despite the clutter, the room felt clean. Everything had its place. Every corner belonged to its own kind of order.
I lay sprawled across rumpled sheets, legs stretched out, letting them swing lazily over the edge of the bed. Over-ear headphones sealed around my head, their cushions snug against my ears. The world outside disappeared, replaced by blissful isolation.
On the screen, an epic battle unfolded.
A young warrior.
A hive lord.
Power colliding with power.
Steel rang out. Impact thundered. Raw force roared through my headphones, vibrating in my skull. The animation was flawless. Every frame deliberate. Motion and impact blended into controlled chaos, perfectly synchronized with music that climbed higher and higher, dragging everything toward its inevitable climax.
For the fourth time, I mouthed the vow alongside him.
*If I can't fight for them… what kind of champion would I be?*
The words struck my chest like a bell, resonating long after the sound faded.
When the hive lord was defeated, the warrior stepped forward. Each step carved certainty where doubt had lived. Hope where fear had collapsed. Light where shadows had lingered too long.
People stopped.
Hearts stilled.
Despair wavered beneath the weight of his presence.
This wasn't a performance.
It was truth.
The world could try to break him.
It would fail.
He existed to restore balance.
And balance would not wait.
Something in me tightened. An echo rippled through my chest, pulling me toward a version of myself I had never dared to reach.
For a brief, dizzy moment…
I knew it could be me too.
The episode ended.
Credits rolled over a haunting melody, smoke-like, lingering in the quiet room as the screen dimmed.
That was the final series I needed to finish. I'd already worked through nearly all my currently airing favourites.
I hit pause and pushed myself upright on the bed, letting out a long, drawn-out sigh as I stared at the ceiling. My fingers spread wide, every ache from hours hunched over pressing into me—but none of it mattered.
There is nothing wrong with enjoying yourself.
---
My name is Neriah. I'm twenty-three, a university student. Right now, I'm back home for the holidays. My parents are healthy, thankfully, and my sister is keeping up with her studies. Everything feels normal. Safe. Ordinary. Except for my younger brother—he dropped out of school during high school, and I realize I never really got the chance to talk to him properly. I want to speak to him as an older brother who genuinely wants a better future for his family. He probably doesn't fully understand how the world works yet.
But right now, lying here in my room with nothing to do, those thoughts feel distant. My real journey started long ago, the day I first started watching anime. It's been part of my life since I was a kid.
Even now, it stings when my parents call what I watch "cartoons." I used to joke about taking it to court—just a joke, but it came from somewhere real. They don't say much about it anymore. Maybe they've accepted it, or just let it be. One day, I'll sit them down and make them watch with me. I think they'd understand me then—and maybe even enjoy it with me… if only they could set aside the idea that colorful, exaggerated animation is just for kids, and see that it can tell deep, mature stories.
My friends, on the other hand… they mostly tease me about it. They call me "the anime guy," but it's never meant to push me away. If anything, it keeps us connected. They always want me to share news about new anime or upcoming games. Even scattered across different cities, that little thread of shared obsession keeps us from drifting too far apart.
I can't believe some people still call anime "cartoons." They just don't get it.
I know it's fiction. I know those worlds are just animated frames, drawn by people I'll never meet. But when I'm lying in my room with nothing to do, those stories feel more real than the lecture halls I sit in every morning. Because they understand something: the feeling of being ordinary. The frustration of wanting more. The hunger for a version of yourself that actually matters.
I wish reincarnation to another world was real—not just stories.
A world full of fantasy and adventure. Sword fights beneath twin moons or something else. Cities carved into mountains, glowing with magic. Dungeons where monsters force you to become stronger or perish. Where training isn't tedious—it's transformative. Where the pain of failure shapes you into someone worthy of legend.
Where you don't just exist, waiting for life to happen—you act. You matter.
Every time I watch characters clash on my laptop, for a brief moment, it feels real. Then the episode ends. The glow dies. Silence reminds me: this isn't my world.
Maybe it's not about the other world at all. Maybe it's about wanting my life to feel as alive, as urgent, as meaningful as theirs.
Sometimes I wonder if I'm not obsessed with anime—maybe I'm just homesick.
Homesick for a place that never existed.
---
My eyes slowly drifted shut.
*Just a minute,* I thought.
*Just a little rest.*
The pressure behind my eyes returned—stronger now. A *pull*, deep in my bones, like tides answering a moon I couldn't see. My breath slowed. The room dimmed, though the laptop still glowed. Shadows stretched longer, softer, as if reality itself were exhaling.
*Was this sleep?*
No. Sleep didn't make your chest feel hollow. Sleep didn't make your fingers go numb while your soul thrummed like a plucked wire.
Something surged within me—a sensation I had no words for. It vibrated through every cell, pulling at something deeper than flesh, deeper than bone.
It wasn't coming from outside.
It was rising *from within me*.
And then—
My heart stuttered.
Once.
Twice.
A pressure bloomed in my chest—not pain, but *wrongness*. The air left my lungs and didn't return the same way. Everything went still. The stillness was perfect and impossible. The laptop's glow froze mid-flicker. The hum of the fridge died. Even the dust motes hung suspended in the air.
The moment passed.
Fainter. Failing.
Then... nothing.
But the world didn't stop. It *resumed*. Sound filtered back in—the laptop's hum, the fridge's distant drone. My chest moved. Up. Down. The rhythm of breathing, automatic and familiar.
Everything was fine.
Except it wasn't quite right. The sensations arrived delayed, like watching myself through a screen, experiencing everything a half-second after it happened. My chest rose and fell, but I couldn't quite sense the air moving through my lungs. The pressure was there, the motion was there, but the *connection* seemed thin. Stretched.
I pushed myself up from the bed. 5:29 p.m. glowed in the corner of my laptop screen as I swung my legs over the edge, my feet landing on the worn carpet.
Except—
I didn't *feel* the carpet. My feet touched the ground, but it seemed far away, like touching something through thick cloth. The texture was there, but different.
I didn't give it much thought and kept moving. People feel strange things when they get tired.
The walk to the mini-fridge seemed longer than usual. Each step carried the weight of another day like the last. But also... weightless. My body moved without the usual drag of gravity and friction.
The fridge door opened with a soft *click*, cool air washing over my face like a whispered secret. I grabbed a drink, condensation immediately slicking my palm, and took a slow sip.
The liquid hit my throat ice-cold, shocking. It yanked me back into the physical world I had been trying so hard to forget, chilling me from the inside out.
But the taste was hollow. Present, but distant. Like tasting a memory instead of the thing itself—the idea of cold, the ghost of sweetness, all filtered through gauze.
The fridge hummed its dull tune. But the sound arrived muffled, like I was hearing it underwater.
I tossed the bottle into the dustbin. My feet carried me to the window.
I pulled back the curtain a crack and peered out at the world beyond the glass. Streetlights bathed the empty sidewalks in a soft, orange glow.
My reflection in the glass window—alive eyes, dishevelled hair. A car passed, its headlights sweeping the pavement before vanishing around the corner.
I stared at the reflection.
I caught something.
My brain refused to process it. Refused to connect what I was seeing to what it meant.
*That's... that's me.*
I spun around.
The room lurched sideways. Gravity felt wrong—too light, too heavy, both at once. My stomach dropped into a void that shouldn't exist inside me.
There. On the bed. *Me.*
Chest completely still. No rise. No fall. Skin with that wrong pallor—not pale, but *empty*. Like something had been extracted, leaving only the shell behind.
My hand flew to my own chest, pressing hard against ribs that felt solid. Real. My heart—I could feel it pounding, frantic and alive.
I touched my face. Warm skin. The rough stubble on my jaw. The small scar above my eyebrow from when I was twelve.
I was *here*. Standing. Breathing. *Real.*
But I was also *there*.
Two versions of the same person. One dead. One... what? Watching? Witnessing my own corpse from across the room?
The wrongness of it crawled up my spine like ice water in my veins.
"No. No, this isn't—"
My voice came out strangled, barely a whisper.
I took a step toward the bed. Then stopped.
What was I going to do? Check my own pulse? Shake myself awake?
The body on the bed didn't move. Didn't breathe. The laptop screen cast blue light across features I'd seen in the mirror every day of my life—but now they looked like a wax sculpture. A copy. Something that *used* to be me.
*When did it happen?*
That moment. On the bed. The vibration in my cell. The pressure in my chest. The stillness.
My heart stopping.
Once.
Twice.
Never starting again.
The realization hit like a fist to the gut.
I *died*.
But I'm still here. Still thinking. Still *feeling*.
The air thickened, pressing against my skin like something tangible. The apartment looked like mine—same posters, same clutter, same stains on the ceiling—but it *wasn't*. Couldn't be.
The angles were wrong. Subtly, sickeningly wrong. The walls seemed to breathe, expanding and contracting with a rhythm that didn't match my pulse. The space between objects stretched and compressed like something alive was reshaping the room from the inside.
"What—" My voice cracked. "What's going on?"
This wasn't my room.
This was an echo of it. A reflection. A place *somewhere*.
---
The air stuttered, existence skipping like a scratched disc.
Reality fractured.
The glass window, walls and door didn't break—they *tore*. Like fabric ripping along an invisible seam. Bright splashes of colour burst through the tear. Pixels breaking apart and then coming back together. The world peeled away in flames, not destroying, but *extracting*. Something was pulling me out, layer by layer, unmaking my connection to this world.
My eyes darted around the room. The walls, the posters, my laptop, the bed, my own body, the fridge, everything around me. One by one, things vanished, burning like paper in a hidden fire. Their edges curled to ash and then faded away.
The floor dissolved beneath my feet.
The void didn't wait for me to fall. It closed in. Darkness rose from every direction, folding around me, pressing in—warm, heavy, inescapable. But warmth gave way to nothing. No temperature. No sensation. *Absence*.
The void didn't swallow me so much as *absorb* me. Weightless. Directionless. I couldn't tell if I was falling or floating or simply ceasing to exist in any meaningful way. My body—what remained of it—dispersed like smoke, edges bleeding into nothing. Thoughts scattered before I could grasp them. My room. The warrior's final strike. My mother's voice, muffled behind a closed door.
All of it slipping away.
I was unraveling.
Ceasing to be.
---
**[SYSTEM ACTIVATED]**
The words didn't appear. They *invaded*.
Each letter burned itself into my consciousness like a brand, blazing in electric blue, spaced with surgical precision. Not written in space—carved directly into what was left of my mind. The presence behind them was vast and cold and utterly indifferent, a weight that crushed down from all directions at once.
I tried to scream.
No mouth. No voice. No air to carry sound.
It rifled through me like I was a filing cabinet, prying open locked compartments, cataloging everything I was. Memories weren't just recalled—they were *extracted*, examined, discarded. The violation was absolute.
*Get out. Get out. GET OUT.*
But there was nowhere for it to leave.
**[Compatibility: Optimal]**
The verdict landed without hesitation, without mercy. A simple statement of fact. I was *useful*.
**[Soul Claimed]**
Ownership transferred.
I wasn't mine anymore.
**[Name: NERIAH]**
My name echoed through me, anchoring what remained of myself.
**[Gender: Male]**
Confirmed.
**[Soul Binding: Initiated]**
**[Beginning Reconstruction of the new body…]**
Pain.
White-hot, absolute pain.
The void convulsed. Nerves ignited where none had existed. Awareness slammed back into me all at once—raw, screaming, unbearable.
**[Skeletal Framework: Initialising]**
Bone formed from nothing. Spine first—vertebrae stacking like building blocks, each one locking into place with a sickening *click*. Then the ribs spread outward, curving, caging empty space that would soon hold organs. Pressure mounted as solidity replaced absence.
**[Nervous System: Connecting]**
Agony exploded.
Nerves threaded through bone like burning wire, every pathway lighting at once. Sensation flooded in with nowhere to go, ricocheting through an unfinished body. I wanted to writhe, to escape, but I had no muscles yet to obey the command.
**[Muscular Structure: Weaving]**
Flesh wrapped around bone. Fibres knitted together, tightening, anchoring. I felt myself being assembled, layer by visceral layer—tissue binding to skeleton, sinew stretching taut.
**[Cardiovascular System: Establishing]**
A heart took shape in my chest.
*Thump.*
Weak.
*Thump.*
Stronger.
Blood surged through vessels still forming, heat and rhythm returning. The pulse was mine again.
**[Organ Systems: Generating]**
Lungs unfurled like dark flowers blooming in reverse. Weight returned. Biology reasserted itself, heavy and inescapable.
**[Integumentary Layer: Forming]**
Skin sealed me in. The boundary between self and void snapped shut.
**[Physical Form: Reconstructed]**
Weight crashed down on me.
I existed again.
Hands. Breath. A body that occupied space and obeyed gravity. The shock of it nearly broke me.
Fabric formed against my skin—light, flexible, unfamiliar. Not what I died in. Something meant for use.
**[Clothing Modifications: Completed]**
**[Avatar creation complete]**
Something aligned deep within me. My soul—it harmonised with it, resonating as if it had always known it. We fit together like a key in a lock that had been waiting.
Something recognised me.
And, to my horror, some part of me recognised it too.
---
**[Integration: Complete]**
**[Reincarnation: Initiated]**
It was the answer to a wish I'd never dared to believe the universe was listening to.