It was staring at me.
My little cousin, Samsam, was staring at me. His wide, dark eyes bored into my soul. Objectively, he was a cute baby. 10/10 protagonist material. One could almost see the golden halo around his head, sat just on top of his curly hair. Seven months had passed since he rudely entered my life without so much as a please or thank you. He was sitting in his crib, still across from mine, staring directly at me, fingers shoved into his mouth. He was drooling.
Since having the realization that I had, in fact, been transported into the world of "Magical Miracle," I had begun preparing for my future in earnest. At 14 months, I could walk, run, and climb with the skill of a child much older than I, nearly keeping up with even my older cousin. Of course, there wasn't much I could do at this stage. But what I could do, was plan.
I knew the plot of "Magical Miracle" better than some of the stories I had written myself. I'd watched every episode multiple times in order to best get my thoughts in order to properly critique the material. I occasionally uploaded MyTube videos armed with verbal essays. I dissected and examined and pulled apart every story arc like it was a corpse at an autopsy. If anyone could succeed in this world, it was me.
I would make this life my bitch.
Assuming that I was Henry Rookwood in some incarnation, I had my work cut out for me. Henry was a pathetic, sniveling, miserable little wretch whose only purpose was to earn sympathy points with the audience and provide the protagonist with a kicked puppy to protect, making himself look even better in the process.
Firstly, Henry was an orphan. The first time this piece of information truly processed in my head, I felt ill. I liked my new parents. Roger was a jovial man who bounded around like a Labrador. Once I was large enough that he felt confident he wouldn't break me, he'd lug me around, tossing me lightly, spinning me around, blowing kisses into my cheeks. He was a sweet man. He worked as a psychiatrist, despite the fact that he could live comfortably off the family fortune without working at all. And he would often sit me on his knee as he looked over his notes and papers, sometimes whispering to me juicy bits of gossip about his patients. I supposed doctor/patient confidentiality doesn't matter when you're talking to a baby.
And my mother, well, I liked her too. She was stern, her face steady with a set and determined look on her face, as though whatever she was doing in the moment always deserved all of her attention. It didn't matter whether that task was cleaning, sewing, or walking across the room. Though she was technically unemployed, she enjoyed making things with her hands, and then selling them online. She made blankets and toys and beaded jewelry and costumes. I enjoyed the moments when she came into the nursery, project in hand, and sat in the rocking chair near my crib. She'd never say anything, and neither would I. We would simply sit in silence, her with her work and I simply watching her. It was the sort of easy existing together that I never got to experience with anybody in my previous life but had always quietly longed for.
And yet shitty Ladybird15 had written them as nothing but cannon fodder… no. I stopped that train of thought as quickly as I could. Ladybird15 was no longer a faceless profile picture on my computer. He was Tristan, one of my brightest students. Whom I killed. This was his story, his child. He'd poured inspiration and hours and tears into this story, and only sold it because the American education system was so damn expensive.
It really wasn't fair to blame this world on that guy. He couldn't have known his silly little story idea would come to life like this. From our classroom interactions, I remembered a polite and mousey young man. Someone like Tristan wouldn't have maliciously murdered people like Naling or Roger if he had known they would eventually be realized as people.
But thinking back on Tristan graciously didn't help me or my new parents at all. Luckily, the producers of the show saw fit to give Henry an entire episode of character story. In the episode in question, Henry received an Artifact – one of the several jade medallions that were peppered throughout the story. He had found it after the protagonist had clumsily lost it at school. Henry, being the good cousin he was, had picked it up with every intention of returning it. However, upon encountering the villain of the day, he loudly wished that he could help. On the spot, in broad daylight, he turned into a nameless hero with the power of flight. Henry subdued the villain, but was then confronted by Velocity and Skylad, the two main heroes. Since his "secret identity" was public knowledge, he'd have to give up his powers for good. Being the pathetic, spineless worm he was, Henry readily relinquished the artifact. However, the episode didn't end there. Following Henry sadly back to his lonely, empty rooms in the Manor, the audience was treated with flashbacks, explaining just why Henry was so sad and lonely.
On Henry's seventh birthday, he begged his parents to take him to the brand new FunTime Amusement Park. His parents originally wanted him to pick something else, but Henry kicked and screamed like the spoiled little heir he'd been, and they'd relented.
Only for them to go on a Ferris Wheel, of which Henry refused to go on for unknown reasons, and for it to promptly explode leaving Henry as the disgraced orphan that his grandparents and Aunts and Uncles couldn't bear to look at. Uncles, plural, because in the children's show, the protagonist was a part of a more conventional nuclear family. No one in the family, save for the protagonist, liked Henry at all. This was justified because Henry had clearly intentionally murdered his parents.
On top of his tragic backstory, Henry was given little else as substance. He was an average student with average looks and no friends, save for his cousin. He was even bullied by the only good character of the show: Samantha.
Samantha Graham was the best character of "Magical Miracle" and the only one worth being invested in. She was the main bully character, acting out in truly heinously evil ways that included calling the protagonist smelly, flipping his lunch tray, threatening to get her "Daddy" involved whenever she didn't get her way, and being a general annoyance.
But it was revealed halfway through season one, that though her parents were technically still married, they had been separated since her infanthood. Her mother, Madam Graham, was a truly despicable woman who was, luckily, rarely around. She was the type of woman to demolish orphanages to build a beauty salon. The type of woman who employs child labor to make feathered hats. The type of woman who had rare animals skinned so that she might wear something "exotic." But the icing on that miserable cake, was that she couldn't even be bothered to remember her own daughters name, calling her Sally, or Susy, or Sarah. She never visited, and often belittled her daughter for her own amusement.
And Mayor Graham, being the mayor of The City, had little to no time for her. Only truly paying attention with a disappointed sigh when Samantha demanded him to use his authority for her own benefit, or when she got into trouble. Aside from the moments when she literally barged into his office to demand he ban all picnics in the park because she hadn't been invited to a lunch party that the protagonist threw, she literally never saw him.
But best of all, in the first episode of season two, Samantha came across an Artifact. It gave her the power of mind control.
And… she didn't use it for evil. Instead, she worked tirelessly to be the best hero she could be. She saw it as a way to remake herself, to redeem herself. She was a good hero. A better hero, indeed, than Sammy. But then, her mother returned to town and expressed interest in the new heroine's outfit, proclaiming it to be fabulous. Magazine worthy, in fact, and demanded her people to get this new hero, Hive Mind, for an interview.
And poor Samantha immediately revealed herself in a desperate bid for her mother's approval, only for her mother to sigh and say dismissively "Of course your outfit is fabulous, it must be inspired by me." Then, her mother proceeded to tell the entire city about her daughter's new hobby.
Seeing as how her identity was compromised, the heroes showed up and took away her Artifact. This prompted Samantha to side with the mysterious, vague, and vaguely mysterious unnamed Big Bad of the story. It is in her episode that we are finally granted the first hint for as to who they are; we are whispered the name "Abraxos."
And then, in season three, she goes back to being a bully even worse than before, going so far as to tell Henry to off himself – not in so many words, this was still a kid's show, but it was understandable enough to the older audiences. No villain arc, no hero arc, it was as though all those episodes of character growth and development never happened! Shitty producers! Shitty creator!
I winced to myself, and then mentally apologized to Tristan.
Samantha aside, Henry's biggest issues stemmed from the fact that his entire family hated him. Thus far, I didn't have that problem. Grandmama avoided me for reasons unknown, but Grandfather smiled at me whenever we were in the same vicinity. My Aunties doted on me, calling me handsome and "such a smart boy." My Uncle and his wife were distant, but on the few occasions I saw them, I could expect cheek pinches and head pats. Even if I wasn't loved by my entire family, I was at least generally liked.
Because I hadn't gotten my parents blown up. For the first time, I was grateful for the lazy writing of "Magical Miracle." As far as I was concerned, there was an easy way to ensure that my parents lived to their natural ripe old ages. I simply had to ask to go to literally anywhere else for my seventh birthday. Or, heck, go nowhere at all!
Or better yet… it was then that a truly genius idea began forming in my mind. I could ask to go to China. Specifically, the Changbai mountain hot spring resort mentioned in… well, not the show. In the show, there was a Missing Artifact that a mysterious old Chinese man (the only POC in the show), known only as "The Old Master," tells the protagonist about in season two, episode four. He only tells Sammy that it can be found in a magical hot spring behind a waterfall, and then the show hard cuts to Velocity picking up the Artifact in question, having magically found the Artefact through the power of being the protagonist of a kid's show.
But I have the magic power of being the teacher of the show's original creator. In one of Tristan's work submissions, a visual writing exercise, he describes said magical hot springs in great detail. In his work, an ancient cultivation sect – random, but I found the detail interesting – established the hot spring resort in order to hide their sacred pools. It is behind said sacred pool that the Artifact had been buried in a little gold chest by the previous owner's wife as a memorial.
So, I had to establish an interest in Chinese culture as soon as I could, to make it believable that a seven-year-old wanted to go visit a random hot spring for his birthday. Easy enough, considering I was, in fact, Chinese. Though, in my past life, I had never really connected with my culture. My mother had been a Chinese immigrant, but she had died when I was born, leaving my very white father to raise me. I had never so much as eaten authentic Chinese food, let alone learned the language or studied the culture. It was as foreign to me as it would have been had I been born, I don't know, French.
But I would remedy that, in this life. And it all starts now. I was ready to start talking.
During the nighttime hours, when it was just Samsam and I, I would practice talking to him. I would recite poetry, song lyrics, and Shakespeare passages. Sometimes, I would just talk at him, reminiscing about my old life. The older I got, the more fluid and instinctive talking became. This is something that might seem obvious and natural to most people, but as somebody trapped in a baby's body, this felt like quite the accomplishment.
But my next step had to be plotted carefully. As funny as the thought originally was, I couldn't just start carelessly speaking like a graduate student. For the past few months, I'd simply not been making many noises at all. I knew myself; I wouldn't be able to pull off a convincing infant/toddler that passed as any kind of "normal." My parents, of course, were concerned by this, particularly my father the psychiatrist. He even consulted his child psychologist colleagues, some were just as baffled by my behavior. Some suggested I might have childhood speech apraxia or a hearing disorder, but the general consensus seemed to be that I should be left alone for the time being to see how I naturally develop, and to revisit the issue should any more abnormalities arise, or should the issue persist into my toddler years.
As I was only fourteen months, I had some time to figure it all out. But I didn't want to wait that long. Once I began speaking, I might be able to naturally escalate relatively quickly. I'd already decided I wanted to be perceived as a child genius. A child genius would be able to talk intelligently by the time they were two, couldn't they? That was reasonable enough.
But what should I choose to be my first word? Mama? Papa? No, that was too babyish for my tastes. Maybe, "no" or "please"?
I was interrupted from my plotting by the arrival of my Aunties. Raisya scooped up Samsam while Lorraine reached for me. "Tummy time, my loves," she said cheerfully as she carried me out into the lounge area. My grandfather was watching the news, and my grandmama was reading a book beside him. She glanced up at my aunties and sniffed haughtily. She placed a lace bookmark to mark her place, then closed the novel and set it to one side. She crossed her legs and stared Raisya down. This was commonplace, and so my aunt didn't really react beyond giving Grandmama a dry smile as she placed Samsam tummy first on a soft blanket, surrounded by toys. I was sat next to him, though I immediately stood and made my way over to Grandfather. Before anyone could think about helping me, I quickly clambered up beside him and grabbed the remote, switching channels to something more interesting.
Lorraine stifled a laugh as I channel surfed. "Guess he didn't want to hear anymore drama about them shitty politicians," her wife said, cheerily. Grandmama frowned severely.
"I don't want to hear that kind of language around my grandsons," she told Raisya. Grandfather rolled his eyes as he patted me on my head.
"Yeah," he said, eyes flashing mischievously. "Watch your fucking mouth."
"Harold!"
I couldn't help myself.
It was too good to pass up.
"FUCK!"
The adults froze and looked at me, the silent child. I beamed at them, feeling nothing but joy in my little internet gremlin heart. "FUCK!" I repeated.
"Henry!" Grandmama scolded. "No, that's naughty!" Henry? Well, that's interesting. I smiled at her, unphased by her tone.
"Fuck."
Grandfather was laughing, and Grandmama swatted his arm with acid all but pouring from her eyes. Lorraine was covering her grin with a dainty hand, but Raisya couldn't be bothered to mask her glee. "Well, well," she said. "Look who's finally talking."
"Fuck." I agreed.