The next thing I felt was a jolt which gave an incredible tension to my whole body, or should I say that I woke up because of this jolt. But as it was when I opened my eyes, I saw nothing, I saw nothing, again only darkness, but unlike the darkness in which I was, this darkness was different and different on a physical level.
Before I had time to think about it, the shaking began to intensify, and my body began to be pressed even more actively. What was going on? And what is this place?
I wish I could ask these questions, but I didn't. I was perfectly aware of what was happening right now, which was that I was being born. It was clear to me because of all my experience and all the stories I had read before, but the thought was eerily conscious and unquestioned despite all its improbability.
In the meantime, my eye caught a strange blue light that my lateral vision had managed to see, which was similar to the light I had seen in that darkness, but before I could look closely and understand anything at all a brighter white light hit my eyes, which managed to blind me for a few minutes. And as strange as it sounds, I was born. I hope I never remember that moment in my life again.
It can certainly be considered a miracle of the world or something, but not when you take such an active part in it, and without your own consent. Not that I minded in any way, but it still gave me a bit of a nasty feeling. Which made me automatically take my first breath in this life.
Before I could regain my clarity of vision my body felt something begin to wrap around it, as I understand it was a blanket or something like that. But at least they didn't hit me in an important place, which would have lowered my own dignity, true only for me, but still.
All the while they wrapped me up and then started carrying me into my mother's arms, my vision began to clear and, to my surprise, my vision began to clear should I note. Newborn babies have poor vision the first time because they can't see properly, but in my case my vision kept getting better and better, reaching near perfect, though perhaps perfect if I could see the dusty curtains that were hanging on the other side of the room.
With this realization, I began to realize that my whole body was behaving in a way that was not particularly childlike, and not very human at all, even though there seemed to be people around me at first glance. I was also able to see almost perfectly, or more accurately, my hearing was perfect, and the moment I recognized that I was not breathing at all until that moment and felt no discomfort whatsoever made me tense up. On my own volition to breathe into my lungs, which made the person, namely the girl in the nurse's suit, twitch, as if she just now realized that I was not breathing, but after looking at me closely she just shrugged as if nothing had happened.
The moment I wasn't breathing made me realize that I hadn't even blinked yet, which again made me blink at will. It's a little stressful to control such static processes, and because my body didn't need to do it all, it didn't start doing it on its own, but maybe this is all because my body hasn't yet acquired the necessary reflexes to do so and over time it should all switch back into automatic mode. All of this made me ask myself one single question, which was quite logical for this situation.
What was happening to me? That was the only thing running through my head.
Before I had time to think more about it, I was handed over from hand to hand by another woman. It was a fairly ordinary woman with dark hair which had no special features, and her brown hair resonated with her eyes which were a couple of shades darker, which made her look even more ordinary, but I think this did not mean that she was not beautiful, she was beautiful as well. A pretty face and nice breasts obviously added to her charm.
When I looked at her and at the same time studied her in detail, this woman, or you can already say mother, did the same and studied me carefully. In her eyes there was an incredible love for me that seduced in the best feelings and wanted to get more of this motherly love. So, I reached out with my little hands toward her and tried to grasp something, and I must note that my muscles, as well as my body, were completely under my control. But anyway, this simple action made the woman smile the brightest smile I had ever seen in my whole life and give me her hand, but because of my small hands I could only properly grasp her finger, which in principle also made her face reflect an even happier smile.
" Yasuke." - the woman opened her mouth and said in a gentle voice as I understood my name. - "Yasuke Matsuda."
Yasuke Matsuda, huh? I understand that I was reborn somewhere in Japan, or perhaps in a place similar to this beautiful country, maybe it was some anime world I had seen before, because I couldn't be reborn with such a strange body in a normal world. But my new name didn't give me any clues, and I had never heard or seen it. Maybe I just wasn't reborn as an original character and the story would start a little later.
* Tinkle *
Somewhere inside my head on a subconscious level was the sound of a notification? I didn't really know what it meant, but... Before I could finish my thoughts, a window suddenly appeared in front of my eyes! Literally, a window. A game window, at that. It was blue and reminded me of that light in the darkness, no, it was that light. Again, there was a complete certainty in my mind about this decision.
I went back to the window and started to study it more closely, it wasn't very big and as mentioned earlier it was blue in color and inside it was a few simple words that at least gave an idea of what was going on. This kind of thing usually appeared on the main characters in some manga.
[Status has been changed!]
[Username changed to Yasuke Matsuda.]
It was written in this simple placard, which immediately after reading it disappeared from my sight or more accurately would be said to have evaporated. As I understood it, this message showed that my status had been changed, or to be more precise, my name had been changed to the one I had just been given.
And that was incredibly beautiful! The thought made me sink deep into my thoughts. At the very least it meant that I had a "system," which was already one of the strongest things. Right then, when I wanted to try to summon it with different words, I felt pressure on my face. I got out of my thoughts and the first thing I saw was... Yes. They decided to feed me. I don't think I would particularly need food, but I don't think I had much choice right now and the only thing I could do was start drinking milk.
This one not-so-pleasant moment in my life is finally over, and I could breathe a sigh of relief. I shudder to think about what will happen next with all this baby body, but if you think about it logically, the "player body", if I have one, should not allow me to experience most human needs, like coping or eating, but I don't think I can use it now, if only because it would not be very normal for a baby.
But whatever the case, floor check my system.
"Aguavporg" came out of my mouth along with the words, which brought a smile to my new mother's face.
Yeah, if you think hard about it, I won't be able to talk normally right after I'm born, even with a "player's body." Well then, I guess I should try to think about it.
"System." That simple word rushed through my thoughts like lightning, making my whole spirit shudder with incomprehensible excitement.
A window appeared before my eyes abruptly, almost in an instant, and it sent an incredible thrill through my body. It was blue and a little bigger than the first one, but it only had a few lines in it.
[Status]
[Inventory]
[Assignments]
[Map]
[Relationships]
[Slot Machine]
[Settings]
[History]
Ahem. It wasn't quite what I was expecting, but I guess his presence is already better than nothing. As much as I wanted to click on [Status] sometime, I knew I was going to linger in this tab for a long time, so I should refrain from doing that for a while and look at the other tabs.
The first tab I wanted to start with was [History], it sounded pretty interesting after all. And while with the others I assumed what they were, it was arousing confusion in me. Concentrating on the button I wanted, I said its name in my head. And it worked!
The tab disappeared and was replaced by another tab that was much larger than the last one. It was the same blue color as the others, so most likely the whole interface of the system would be blue, but as it was, practically at a glance I knew what the tab meant. It was, oddly enough, a story that had all my few conversations written in it. It also showed past system notifications.
At the top in the top corner, you could see a protruding tab on which the name of the tab was written. Also, on the bottom edges of the window you could see the usual search engine functions, namely a word search and a filter, which so far consisted of conversations and system notifications. Which I decided to click on for the sake of interest.
And immediately realized that it was not in vain. As I was able to see the very first message from the system.
[A gift box had been added to your inventory!]
[Start the rebirth process?]
[-YES-/NO]
[If the user does not make a choice within ten minutes, a "YES" choice will automatically be made and the user will be sent to a world that will be randomly selected, as will the character.]
[Due to the user's inactivity for ten minutes, the "YES" choice was automatically made]
[-YES-/NO]
[WARNING!!!]
[This was the only interaction the system had with the user.]
[Simple questions like "where from?" and "why?" and "why me?" are irrelevant. Now YOU are the user of the system, and nothing else should matter to you anymore.]
[From now on, you have only yourself to rely on.]
[Good luck!!!]
That... was weird, but I think it was all factual. It doesn't matter what came before or why it happened, all that matters is that it's already happened. And at least it's nice to know that it's not a reasonable system, and I never particularly liked reasonable systems. And this means that I was reborn into some world and some character that I've never heard of, but I think in time I'll understand what kind of world it is.
And the most important thing that caught my eye was the "gift wrap." Who doesn't like free gifts? Especially ones like this. But as much as I wanted to push this, I had to hold off on it for a while, until a quieter time, or who knows, maybe I'll start glowing or a wave of pain will run through my whole body like last time. So, it's better to wait until I'm alone.
And I think it was a good moment to switch to another tab. And as much as I didn't want to go in order, Inventory. Was my next choice because of its clarity and rather logical name.
And the name fully confirmed what I saw, it was the usual in-game inventory, which wasn't particularly different in appearance from the last tab. Still, it had a significant change from the previous one, namely, that instead of the history of all conversations, most of the window was occupied by a large number of slots. Which were the inventory slots. Also in the center at the bottom was a [1/99] box flanked by unnecessary arrows, because I could turn the page with my mind and that meant that I had 99 pages of inventory, where each page had 60 slots which were 6 cells per column and logically 10 cells per row, which meant that I had... 5940 inventory cells which was a monstrous amount of inventory. This of course would have been easier to calculate with a calculator, but...
When I thought about the calculator, another window popped up in front of my eyes that was on top of the inventory. It was a calculator window. The very usual calculator that was on all computers. Was it weird and somehow wrong? So, with empty thoughts in my head, I just closed it.
When I looked more closely at the inventory window, I noticed another icon in the upper right corner. It was a "?" icon, which quite logically meant help. Without a second thought, I thought about opening it, and without any resistance another window popped up, just like with the calculator. In the window that popped up was written, which was logical rules that consisted of only a few points.
[1. The number of items in one cell may not exceed 99.]
[2. One special item occupies one slot.]
[3. No living creatures can be placed in inventory.]
[4. Anything that goes into the inventory goes into stasis.]
These were brief, but understandable rules. And as I understand it, the definition of "special items" is something like in a single copy or somehow altered, like a torn textbook or a data carrier with some information. And even if they had the same information on them, they would still occupy the same item.
Also, the only item that was in my inventory was the gift that the system gave me at the beginning. It was a plain blue gift box, tied in a gold bow, and on each side of the box was a colored question mark that shimmered with all the colors without stopping. Usually in games, though, you can find out information about items in your inventory. Could I do the same?
In my opinion, the wish from the gift box appeared a box was like a rectangular outline in which was written just a couple of sentences.
[This gift box was given to the user as a gift. It could give the user a random "Ultimate ???" to survive the user]
Everything was brief and clear, which is to be expected from the system, unless of course you count the last survival box. And the only thing that raised questions was "Ultimate ???". What does that mean? It was something familiar and was lingering somewhere on the edge of my mind, but I couldn't remember anything exactly. I think it had something to do with the world.
Okay. What was there next?
Before I could choose my next step, I noticed that the space outside the window began to move strangely somehow. I tried to look behind the window, which I succeeded in doing, and the window faded into the background becoming more transparent and ceased to catch my eye, while I was perfectly able to see what was happening behind the screen, and what I saw there, oddly enough, was swaying. The woman who gave birth to me started rocking me, apparently noticing that I was still awake and trying to put me to sleep.
I had to abandon my future plans and try to fall asleep somehow, I hope I can fall asleep without causing strange reactions from people, but maybe I can... as much as I hated to try it, I was eerily curious to try it. After all, just about every character in the games could do it. A simple thought echoed in my head. "Sleep."
To my regret, or perhaps luck, another window appeared before my eyes. It was titled "Sleep," and at the bottom was a dial that showed 16:21. Shit. This really could turn into a game character, but I guess I don't have any other choice for now, and then I could try to use it all less often. In my mind I decided to move the hand of the clock to 04:21 at night and one word "Confirm" flashed through my mind. Which made the window in front of my eyes disappear and feel my eyes begin to stick together, trying to put me into sleep, and my thoughts could no longer latch on to anything in particular. And the only thing I could think about at the moment was that it was incredibly cool and rewarding.