"Was I reborn?"
In the dim light of a world newly unveiled, the newborn child lay cradled in the soft embrace of a blanket, his thoughts still shrouded in the haze of awakening.
He felt as though he had emerged from the depths of a dream, where reality had only just begun to unfurl its vivid colors. As he attempted to move, every tiny motion felt like a Herculean effort, his limbs heavy and unfamiliar.
With a sudden squirm, he felt the slippery coolness of his skin, an odd sensation that sent a ripple of confusion through him. Then came the sharp—Paa—the sound of a playful slap on his behind.
"Auu"
A small whimper escaped his lips, and tears threatened to spill, glistening like droplets of morning dew on a blade of grass.
"Ouch," he tried to articulate, but the words dissolved into a garbled grunt, a mere whisper against the overwhelming tide of sensation.
Tears streamed down his cheeks, flowing freely like a stream escaping its banks, as he emitted soft grunts, still grappling with the sting of newfound pain.
'How ironic,' he mused, a smirk lurking beneath his watery gaze. 'I thought I was impervious to pain.'
Each part of his body was a sensitive nerve, alive and aware, yet in his blurred vision, he could discern the flurry of activity around him.
*Draping in fabric*
He was being swaddled snugly, enveloped as if in a cocoon, before being passed into the arms of another—his parent. How he knew? For some inexplicable reason, the 'scent' of this person.
The embrace of the close unfamiliar wrapped around him, familiar yet foreign. 'Blood is thicker than water, after all,' he reflected, as a sweet voice echoed through the air, sending a gentle shiver down his spine. "Kyorin."
"—!!?"
A tremor coursed through Kyorin's tiny frame, his mind racing with a single thought: 'How did she...'
But before he could delve deeper into the mystery, the woman continued with a gentle smile, "Kyorin... Yes, I will call you that, my dear."
Relief washed over him like a warm tide, and he thought, 'So she just coincidentally picked the same name from my previous life.'
As she laid him against her, her hand tenderly patting his chest, a sense of comfort enveloped him.
"Hmm," Kyorin's eyelids grew heavy, and he thought, 'Warm and nice.' As he surrendered to the embrace of sleep, he whispered to himself, 'I am tired.'
With the innocence of infancy, as his small figure drifted into slumber, Xia pressed a soft kiss to his forehead.
In that moment, a flicker of hope ignited within her—a belief that her life would be different this time, untouched by the shadows of the past.
Yet, the word future echoed ominously in her mind, conjuring the face of a certain man whose memory darkened her expression.
'It wouldn't be the same, right?' she thought, her fist tightening in determination. She clung to the belief that the same tragedy wouldn't unfold again.
"Haah," With a deep breath, she closed her eyes, the midwife observing the tender scene with a smile as she began to tidy up around them.
In the days that followed, Kyorin, like any toddler, spent his time enveloped in the simplicity of infancy—resting, soiling his clothes, and embracing the rhythm of life.
"Time for milk," Xia's voice rang out, a familiar melody that made Kyorin sigh. Mentally bracing himself, he found the routine odd at first, yet he soon embraced it, believing this was simply the way of the world.
As Kyorin was lifted into the air by Xia, he found himself in that same awkward position, a prisoner of circumstance.
'If only I could show a bit of resistance,' he mused, but his limited physical capabilities rendered him powerless against Xia's insistence as he nestled closer against Xia's chest, feeling the warmth envelop him like a comforting blanket.
'Haah, since I was an orphan in my previous life, I really don't know how to react when faced with such love,' he thought, a sense of vulnerability creeping in.
The gentle rhythm of her heartbeat resonated in his ears, a soothing lullaby that both intrigued and unsettled him. It was a sensation he had never fully experienced—this raw, unfiltered affection.
The stark contrast to his past life, defined by isolation and detachment, made the moment both alien and strangely comforting.
For the first time, he wondered if this was what people meant by the 'human instinct for connection.'
With a resigned sigh, he surrendered to the moment, instinctively sucking as he realized he needed nutrients to grow after all.
After a while, when Xia finally finished, Kyorin's body betrayed him once more, and he defecated right after drinking.
"Haah, I really deal with the shit on my back, can I?" he attempted to joke, though the humor fell flat, echoing in the emptiness of his mind. 'Man, am I lame at making jokes,' he reflected, a hint of self-awareness creeping in.
*Outside noises*
Suddenly, his ears perked up at an unusual sound from outside.
At that moment, Xia's body tensed, involuntarily shuddering as she cleaned him up and moved toward the door, leaving Kyorin to wonder, 'What could be happening out there?'
*Clank!*
The sound of a flower pot shattering resonated through the air, drawing Kyorin's attention. He craned his neck to see outside, where Xia stood with one of the village elders, known affectionately as Grandma Tang.
This kind woman had arrived in the village seventeen years ago, her wisdom and warmth a comforting presence for Xia.
Yet today, her eyes were reddened, brimming with a fierce anger that contrasted sharply with her usual serenity.
"Xia," she began, her voice heavy with concern. Xia braced herself, a silent prayer echoing in her mind.
'No, no, please let it be different.' But reality often wore a mask of disappointment, and the words that followed were a haunting refrain: "That bastard... he has betrayed you."
With a visceral crack, the flower pot shattered, and Xia's mind went blank. Her once-bright eyes, filled with spirited hope, dulled as memories came flooding back, haunting her with their shadows.
Perhaps she had been too hopeful, clinging to the fragile threads of a different fate after the fate of her child altered. Now, her world felt as if it were crumbling, and she stormed inside, a tempest of emotions.
Inside, Kyorin noticed a stark change in Xia. She looked different, almost as if possessed by the very demons she tried to escape.
Helpless to intervene, he could only watch as she retreated to her chambers, a heavy omen settling over their home.
Suddenly, another presence entered—the familiar figure of Grandma Tang. Her expression was troubled, fury simmering beneath the surface as she spotted Kyorin.
Instantly, her gaze softened, and she approached him, lifting him into her arms with a tenderness that belied her earlier anger.
Kyorin didn't protest, though an unsettling sensation washed over him as he gazed at this kind yet formidable woman.
"Poor thing," Grandma Tang sighed, her voice laced with sympathy. "That bastard of a father has abandoned you and your mother. Such a pity."
Kyorin finally understood the reason behind Xia's strange behavior.
As Grandma Tang sighed, "Haah," she lamented softly, "Why am I even explaining this to a child?"
Her murmurs, seemingly meant for herself, resonated within Kyorin like a distant echo. He found her words illuminating, even as an unsettling knot tightened in his small stomach.
'This woman... is not so trustworthy,' he realized.
Having lived a life as an incarnation of malice, Kyorin possessed an uncanny ability to sense the darkness in others.
It was a discerning gift, one that allowed him to detect malice when he drew close to it. And Grandma Tang carried that weight within her; he could feel it like a cold draft in a forgotten room.
Yet, being but a child, he decided to play along, tilting his head innocently as she sighed, "As I thought." But just then, a strange noise broke through the air from inside the house.
While untrained ears might have dismissed it as Xia throwing a tantrum, the two recognized the two distinct sounds: one was the slithering of a rope across the ground, the other the abrasive grinding of wood against concrete. Grandma Tang's eyes widened, a flicker of fear crossing her face.
Kyorin's mind raced, clawing at fragments of Xia's behavior. 'Things don't add up.' He mused.
In his eyes, Xia's earlier outburst, the rigidity in her movements—it wasn't mere anger; it was disappointment. It wasn't despair; it was inevitability.
"Had she known all along?"
" Was she following a script no one else could see, a narrative penned only for her?"
The thought gnawed at him, consuming his focus. Yet, in that moment of introspection, a sharp cry escaped his lips as Grandma Tang gently dropped him onto the floor. "Auuu"
Pain shot through him, forcing clarity where confusion had once reigned.
"Why had he been so fixated on unraveling her actions?" On dissecting her emotions? The answer struck him like a thunderclap: it had distracted him from what truly mattered—what she was about to do.
"Little Xia, don't!" Grandma Tang called out, her voice a blend of desperation and authority, piercing through the fog of Kyorin's thoughts.
In that instant, Kyorin realized the urgency of the moment, the folly of his inaction, and the critical need to act.
With pain in his ass, he moved toward the door where Grandma Tang was frantically banging.
"Auu," he let out a grunt, but his voice was too small for Xia to hear, dulled by the chaos surrounding them.
"AUU!" he grunted again, something primal emerging from his vocal cords. Finally, he spoke, "Mama."
"!!?" Grandma Tang halted in her tracks, astonished as she witnessed Kyorin, no more than four months old, uttering words.
"MAMA!" he cried, this time screaming at the top of his lungs, sharp pain slicing through his throat.
He coughed hard, choking on his saliva, and Grandma Tang quickly scooped him up, rubbing his back soothingly.
As the pain subsided, Kyorin heard the sound of the door creaking open, his eyelids growing heavy with fatigue. 'Damn, I really am hopeless right now,' he thought.
As his eyes grew heavy, Kyorin heard the muffled Paa of a slap, followed by Grandma Tang scolding Xia and Xia's frantic apologies directed at him.
A strange sensation crept over him, sharp and confounding. His chest felt tight—not with relief, but with something deeper.
He wasn't one to dwell on emotions; they were distractions. Yet, here they were, demanding acknowledgment.
"Why did I act?" the question beckoned.
His gaze flickered to Xia, her sobbing form a stark contrast to the rigid figure she'd been. Moments from something irreversible, she had stood on the brink, and he had stepped in—not from instinct or duty, but because it was required.
The realization unsettled him. For someone who had always seen himself as detached, floating unbound through life, his actions told a different story. "My actions mattered." He inwardly echoed.
Detachment had been his mask, but now it felt more like a tool—a way to see clearly when clarity was needed most. And though this realization challenged his sense of self, he found a strange peace in it.
His gaze returned to Xia, a single guardian he almost lost. All he knew was that, in that moment, he had been exactly where he needed to be.
"I guess…" Kyorin murmured to himself, a faint hint of self-awareness breaking through his usual stoicism. "I was useful in a way."
His voice, barely above a whisper, drifted into the void as his eyelids grew heavy, surrendering to the pull of exhaustion.
The muffled cacophony of distant scolding dissolved into the soft murmur of stillness as a gentle breeze swept through, carrying away the lingering shadow of ill fortune that had hung over the house.
The wind flowed onward, its path guided toward the heart of Yang Niu village, where the withered tree stirred. Its brittle branches trembled.
Its brittle branches shivered, not from the caress of the breeze but from a profound disturbance, a resonance rippling through the threads of existence.
Deep within its ancient core, the entity awoke, its awareness rippling like the surface of a quiet pond disturbed by a single drop.
"Huh," it mused, its voice like a low rumble of thunder across a distant sky.
"This child… has managed to shift the fate of that lass." The tree's groaning bark echoed its thoughts, each creak and crack a testament to the weight of its curiosity.
What Kyorin had done was no ordinary act. His presence and choices had woven an anomaly into the fabric of destiny.
The preordained path—rigid and unyielding—had fractured, allowing a new branch to sprout for Dan Xia, rekindling hopes that had teetered on the brink of being extinguished by destiny's Wuthering Waves.
The entity's interest deepened, its formless essence coiling and uncoiling within the ancient bark. "I wonder," it murmured, each word infused with contemplation, "were you brought into this world for this very purpose, my fated Resonator?"
The tree fell silent once more, its watchful presence veiled in stillness. Yet its thoughts lingered—tangled in the intricate dance of destiny and free will.
Somewhere beneath the heavens, amidst the countless spinning bubbles of possibility, a single ripple had begun to spread, born from the unassuming actions of a boy whose path was only beginning to unfurl.
To be continued...