"Save him!"
"Help!"
"How could this happen?"
"Put him in the jar!"
"Use the pump!"
Ryoichi could hear all sorts of voice spinning around his head, from near to far. Oxygen was running away from him, making him hard to breathe. He started to choke, but the salty water stopped him from coughing. His body began to shake because of the lack of oxygen in his brain.
And suddenly, the water in his lung seemed to be taken away, and oxygen was coming back to him through his mouth.
He opened his eyes. Everything around him turned from brightness to clearness.
'Am I in the hospital?' He thought, but the gradually clear sight showed a completely different view from a hospital.
In front of him were like water waves, undulating.
'Am I still in the fountain?'
He was confused, trying to lift his hand and get up. However, his hands seemingly could not touch the water.
Ryoichi rubbed his eyes and tried to see everything clear. He was like lying in a glass bin under water, around which, there were few people standing outside the bin and watching him. That said, they looked slightly different. Their skin shined in a silvery grey color, and the four limbs were longer than the normal. Most importantly, they all were in the water without any diving or swimming equipment! What are they! Are they ghosts?
He burst into shouter: "Ah!"
"Thank Poseidon! You finally wake up. What's wrong with you? How come you suddenly become allergic?"
"Where am I? Who are you? What's going on here?" Ryoichi was very confused.
"Are you out of your mind? You're in the jar. For Poseidon's sake, you were allergic and could not breathe, so that you fainted on sentry duty. I took you here and the nurse put you in the jar." One of the guy with a genial face but worried expression said.
"What are you talking about? What jar? What allergic? What sentry duty? Is it my illusion or you guys really standing in the water? Where are your diving equipment? How can you breathe? Why are we under the water?"
Tons of questions thrown up by Ryoichi seemed to make them more surprised and astonished than him to the whole situation.
"Code R, we've been living under water for centuries! " That same guy explained to me and then turned to the person besides, "nurse, is he losing his memory?"
"It seems to be like that, which also explains why he forgot how to breathe under water. Here you go, put him on the mask before he can remember everything."
Then, something emerged near the head in the plastic bin and was automatically put on Ryoichi's head. It was a transparent helmet. By touching it, he felt there were some component like gill behind the helmet.
"Code R, you can come out now. The queen gave you a day off, so you can go back to work tomorrow. Take some rest. Go visit somewhere. This might trigger your memory."
"Oh okay, you guys are letting me out, so I've put on the helmet. Where is the oxygen hose?"
"What? Oxygen hose? Hahaha," the nurse laughed, "he really doesn't know anything. Code S, will you please take care of him for now?"
"Of course, he is my dearest cave mate." Said the man who was talking to Ryoichi.
"Wait, wait, wait, only a helmet and no oxygen? You guys must be kidding me. I'm about to get drowwwwn…"
Inside the so-called jar, there was a stream of air pushed him out before he finished the sentence. His body, then, was completely surrounded by the water. He was very nervous, scaring to be drown or something, but entering the water surprisingly made him feel comfortable, like coming back to mom's hug. He tried to breathe, and he indeed breathed the slightly salty but fresh air. He breathed a few more times, the air was continuously coming through his nose. By turning his head, he saw the gill-like equipment on the helmet is moving, which absorbed the oxygen dissolved in the water and provided to the helmet inside.
It was like Ryoichi became a fish through the helmet.
He thought: 'I must be reincarnated to another world. I have to figure out everything that need to know to live in this world. I remembered the amine or manga I read before that the characters who are reincarnated can all become the protagonist in the new world. Such things happened to me must be a second chance for me! I think I'll be also ruling this world! Unlike the previous life where I was only an ordinary, poor, and tragic person. From now on, I'll say goodbye to the shit ordinary life!'
"R, are you feeling well? Where do you want to go now? You wanna have some food?" Code S said.
"I'm good, thank you so much, mr. …"
"I'm code S. You always call me S."
"Okay, S. So, I'm code R, right?"
"Correct."
"Why do we only have a code, a letter? Don't we have names?"
"You really don't remember nothing, don't you?" S explained, "In the ocean world, only the elite can have real names. We're lucky to have the code because we're queen's guards. For others without any palace work, like millions of them, they don't even have a code. They might just be number 64780765 or something. Our code is inherited from our parents, like your dad was the previous code R, and my mom was the previous code S. Now they retired so we can replace them. Before getting this code, I was number 94857364."
"Well, sounds like being code R and S is kinda nice."
"Nice?" S came closer to Ryoichi and said: "I would say it's much nicer to be a normal number. At least it will be freer. Being a guard like us is just standing outside the castle, and nothing else. And, guards also have hierarchy. We're like the lowest class. Think of it, R and S, and the top one is A. Codes A is like, can stay in the castle. Those excellent ones might have chances to be given real names. Besides, being in the middle really has a lot of pressure. You have to prevent someone with lower code, who can replace you by killing you if you have no offspring. Guards with higher codes? Some of them are even worse cause the higher can do anything to the lower. I tell you, I highly suspect that what happened to you is that someone tries to poison you or something."
Ryoichi thought he could not breathe was because of the reincarnation and S didn't know anything about it, but he still made up his minds that he had to be careful for living.
"So, why would you save me? If you let me die, you can replace me right?"
"Are you crazy? We're friends! You treat me, well not only me, you treat others very genially! How can I betray you just to have one level up?"
"Hahaha, indeed, we're only one level apart."
Ryoichi was a little bit of joyful knowing he was not an ordinary number, but then upset after knowing his situation. He was still an ordinary and tragic company's slave, doing the same daily work, who didn't deserve a name and could be replaced in any time.
'Why is it so similar to the previous life?!'
He whined in his minds and was determined not to be an ordinary person, again! He would get a name, not a code, not a number, but a real name in this hierarchical world. Before that, he had to learn how to live in this world, which firstly was how to breathe like others under water.