In a hospital room of Kanou General Hospital in the middle of the night, a black-haired woman in her mid twenty was giving birth.
"It's aโฆ Beautiful baby girl.", a nurse announced, mildly shocked and perturbed by the look of the baby to the exhausted woman now a mother.
The baby was not particularly ugly compared to other babies but the pair of bony protrusions on her head that looked like cat ears but in the form of horns and a soft tuft of pink hair made the baby girl stand out.
Then as the baby opened her eyes, two beautiful ruby red eyes observed their surroundings and suddenly the black pupil inside of them turned to pinprick before a shrill and piercing cry escaped the baby.ย
'AAAAHHH! This wasn't a fucking dream!' was the thought of the baby before she was given to the mother and against her consent nearly instantly fell asleep.
Ten months later.
The pink-haired baby named Kaede was staring at the slowly spinning musical cribs. Her eyes filled with contradicting feelings.
'Even after all this timeโฆย It's hard to digest that I died and have a second chance at life.', Kaede thought, indeed she was not in her first life, she reincarnated. She remembered how she died, how absurd it was, and how it pissed her off, aggrieved her, and angered her.
She was walking to the veterinarian clinic she was working as a veterinary radiologist when she heard a speeding car, turning her, and she was met with a tire from the car and it slammed into her face.ย
Her neck did a 180ยฐ turn in the wrong direction after all, not that she was aware of that. Evidently, she died on the spot but that did not stop her from feeling for even the briefest of time pain on a level she could have never imagined felt and despair at the realization of her imminent death.
Saying she was happy about being reincarnated would be the understatement of the century, yet it was still extremely hard, strange, and perturbing.ย
First being a fully aware baby with all of the pros and cons for someone who was 29 in her last life was all but normal, her parent was younger than her in her past life and to boot she rapidly discovered that she was not a he anymore.
This was not of real importance at the moment, but she was aware that it will be and it was not like she hated being on the fairer sex now.ย
Kaede was just puzzled about how she should feel about it, a new life, a new perspective on things. It was a change she did not ask for but again, what right did she have to complain?
She died because she was at the wrong place, wrong time. If there was any higher force responsible for her rebirth she was grateful toward them. For her it was unlike what she read in novels and fanfiction, it was real.
Putting her hand in her mouth she felt her teeth, she had just recently finished teething and it was quite unpleasant but that meant her food choice will have more variety besides microwaved milk and admittedly majorly unlikable mushy baby food.
Then her hand moved to the two bony protrusions on her head, the horn for lack of any comparison were smoothly shaped like cat ears and extremely sensitive to touch.ย
It was unlike any malformation she heard of, and as a veterinary radiologist she did see a lot of such cases, majorly thanks to inbreeding but that's another story. They felt right as if they should be here.ย
It wasn't the only strange thing about her body, her vibrant pink hair was for her alien, and the fact it looked 100% only amplified this feeling.ย
Frankly, it baffled her that it was even possible, then there were her ruby-red eyes, she admitted they were enchanting and beautiful but also completely alien.
Kaede seriously doubted she was human, but besides those physical aspects, she didn't feel like she was something else but human.ย
Her parents looked perfectly human too even if neither of them had pink hair or ruby red iris, both had black hair and brown eyes. It made her question things but at least she was 100% her Mom was her biological mother.
Not that it mattered she liked both of her parents, yeah it was too soon to call it familial love, but one thing was for sure is that they loved her back. Even if she was strange, kids even younger than her were abandoned for far less.
She was also conflicted on how she should feel about her new parents, but decided to not overthink too much on that part and that her Mom and Dad of her past life would be okay, or even encouraged to love her new parents.
Those same physical characteristics made her remember an anime she saw in her past life when she was 13 or 14 about a girl with pink hair, red eyes, and a tendency for mass murder with strange invisible arms. Besides this, she didn't remember much of the plot or any characters for that matter.
Anyway, she was not going to cross the possibility of being the same thing as that girl, a diclonius or something they were called.ย
The possibility was there, but at that point, it only was a coincidence until proven otherwise, and again beside her unique appearance she felt perfectly human with no magical hand and powers or cheat whatsoever.
She also did not know where besides on alternate Earth in Japan where she reincarnated and if she should worry about things outside of the norm.
Yawning and stretching her little body, Kaede started to feel drowsy and rapidly fell into the world of dreams. Her parents were lucky that she rarely ever cried and as such did not have the full and true experience of being young parents.
Two months later and it was her first birthday, she was dressed in a Fuschia dress for babies she disliked.ย
In front of her was her Mother, Hoshiko, and her Father, Taori waiting for her to blow out the candle after they finished singing a butchered version of Happy Birthday To You.
One thing quite strange was that at no point in time did she see either of her parents bring friends or family members.ย
The same goes for her getting to see the outside which besides going to the hospital for a check-up, nothing. There clearly was something unusual going on but nothing to get any meaningful conclusion of. She also was forbidden from watching TV.
'Do they realize if it wasn't me as their kid they would have waited here until the entire candle melted on the cake?', she thought clearly baffled by the lack of common sense of both.
Kaede did not hide that she was smarter than her physical age would suggest, she could speak since she was nine months old, of course, she was not fluent, even now far from it but that was still mind-boggling for a kid her age.ย
Her first word was 'fuck' at seven months old, she did not have a clue of what it meant at the time. When she learned what it meant she repeated as much as she wanted without any repercussions.