A gloomy day in Tokyo, Japan. The sky hung low and heavy with dark clouds, threatening rain that would soon soak through the holes in his only pair of shoes. A frail looking young man with lank, greasy black hair walks down the street, shoulders hunched against the world that had never shown him anything but cruelty. His skin was a sickly yellowish-white, thin enough that blue veins showed through like worms beneath the surface. He has ripped clothes in a plastic bag that barely supports his items, the cheap material stretching and tearing with each step.
The stench of his unwashed body trailed behind him—he hadn't been able to pay his water bill for three months. The public bathhouse had banned him after other patrons complained about his festering sores and the strange, scaling rash that covered much of his back and thighs. He starts to walk towards what he reluctantly calls his "house," thinking about his life—if you could even call it living.
He's a 30 year-old man but has a disease that makes him look young, trapping him in a body that appears barely past adolescence. The doctors at the free clinic had shrugged, uninterested in his rare condition. "Terminal," one had muttered while scribbling a prescription for painkillers so weak they barely touched the constant agony that radiated from his joints. His medical file had been stamped "CHARITY CASE" in bold red letters.
His eyes always stayed cold, dead like a fish left too long in the sun. The windows to a soul that had given up long ago. He barely ever smiles—he stopped trying after his teeth began rotting in his twenties, blackened stumps now filling his mouth, several missing entirely from the time his landlord had hit him with a pipe for being two days late on rent.
Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth as he trudged forward, remnants of today's beating still fresh. His coworkers at the waste processing plant had cornered him in the locker room again, taking turns throwing punches at his already bruised ribs. The foreman had watched, smoking a cigarette, occasionally calling out suggestions: "Hit his kidneys again, that's where it really hurts!" One worker had smashed his face against the metal locker, laughing as his teeth cut into his cheek. "Freak," they had called him. "Worthless parasite." They had stolen his weekly wages again, leaving him just enough for a single bus ticket.
It wasn't the first time. It wouldn't have been the last. Every payday brought the same ritual of humiliation and pain. Sometimes they would force him to bow and thank them for "teaching him his place in society." Once, they had made him lick the bathroom floor clean while they recorded it on their phones, threatening to send it to the few employers in town who hadn't yet blacklisted him.
His stomach growled painfully, twisted with hunger that had become his constant companion. Five days since his last proper meal—half a package of expired noodles he'd found in a dumpster behind the convenience store. The shop owner had caught him and sprayed him with a hose, the icy water stinging his open wounds. The taste of rot still lingered in his mouth, mixing with the metallic tang of his own blood and the bitter film of stomach acid that kept rising up his throat.
He gets bullied, beat on by other coworkers daily. Last month, one had burned his arm with a cigarette for "looking at him funny." The wound had become infected, the skin around it turning an angry red with yellow pus leaking out. He had no money for antibiotics. The free clinic had a three-week waiting list.
His body was a map of misery—cigarette burns, knife scars from the time three teenagers had cornered him in an alley "just for fun," patches where his hair had fallen out from stress and malnutrition. A missing fingernail where a machine at work had crushed it, and his supervisor had refused to let him seek medical attention until his shift was over.
He says his life is a living hell, but it doesn't matter. "I can't do anything. I'll just crumble away and die," he mutters, a string of drool and blood hanging from his split lip. The words come out slurred through his broken teeth, the sour smell of his own breath making him wince.
His apartment waits for him—a mold-infested single room in a condemned building that the landlord still illegally rented to the desperate. Black toxic mold covered the bathroom ceiling, raining spores down while he showered in cold water on the rare occasions the pipes worked. Exposed wiring occasionally sparked when it rained, twice starting small fires that he had to put out with his bare hands. The burns still hadn't healed properly.
Last winter, his fingers had turned blue from the cold when the heating failed. He'd huddled under newspapers, unable to afford blankets, watching his breath crystallize in the freezing air. His landlord had laughed in his face when he'd begged for repairs, then threatened to throw him onto the street if he complained again, reminding him that no one else would rent to "human garbage" like him.
"You should be grateful," the landlord had sneered, spraying spittle onto his face. "A creature like you would be sleeping in a sewer otherwise."
Cockroaches scurried across his sleeping mat at night, sometimes crawling into his ears as he slept, their tiny legs tickling his eardrums. Rats had bitten him twice, once badly enough to leave a chunk of flesh missing from his calf. He'd sewn it closed himself with fishing line stolen from a shop, biting down on a wooden spoon to keep from screaming. The wound had festered for weeks, leaking a foul-smelling discharge that soaked through his pants.
His one window looked out on a brick wall less than two feet away, blocking all sunlight. The room never brightened beyond a dismal gray, matching the perpetual twilight of his existence. The ceiling leaked brown water when it rained, the droplets leaving rusty stains on his only change of clothes.
At night, he could hear his neighbors—drug addicts and prostitutes mostly. The sounds of their desperation penetrated the paper-thin walls: fights, sex, sobbing, sometimes overdoses. Twice he'd found bodies in the hallway. No one had come to claim them.
As he looks down, trying to build up the strength to walk his last steps to get home, a wave of dizziness makes the world tilt. His vision blurs as hunger, pain, and exhaustion conspire to rob him of consciousness. He stumbles, disoriented, and steps into the street without looking, but the light is green.
A truck horn blares—the last sound he will ever hear in this miserable life. The massive vehicle slams into his emaciated body at full speed. The impact shatters every bone in his chest, sending shards of his own ribs puncturing through his lungs and heart. He's thrown twenty feet, spinning through the air like a broken marionette before crashing down onto the unforgiving asphalt.
He hits onto his head, the crack of his skull against the pavement echoing like a gunshot. Blood erupts from the massive fracture, pissing crimson fluid across the street in pulsing jets. His skull cracks open like an egg, the bones splitting apart to expose the soft gray matter beneath. Brain tissue and bone fragments spray across the asphalt in a grotesque constellation. His left eye pops from its socket from the pressure, hanging obscenely by the optic nerve, dangling against his ruined cheek.
He sits there, blood dripping down his shattered skull, his exposed brain throbbing with each weakening heartbeat. He can feel the cool air on parts of himself that should never be exposed to the world. A piece of his own skull lies next to his twitching hand, white and stark against the black road.
"I guess this is the end," he gurgles through a mouthful of blood and broken teeth, his tongue partially severed from having bitten through it during impact. "It's not like anyone is gonna be sad."
No one rushes to help him. Pedestrians walk around his broken body, some holding up phones to record the gruesome scene, others hurrying past with averted eyes. The truck driver hasn't even stopped. In his final moments, he receives the same indifference from humanity that has marked his entire existence.
He starts fading off to darkness. He tries to fight it out of some primal instinct, but he only thinks of how there's nothing to do even if he does fight. His life had been nothing but pain and degradation. He could barely pay rent, subsisting on food scavenged from restaurant dumpsters, often going three or four days without eating anything at all. When the hunger became unbearable, he would sometimes chew on newspaper soaked in water just to have something in his stomach.
He lives in one of the most shitty apartments, where the walls were so thin that winter winds blew straight through them. Sometimes he would wake to find cockroaches nesting in his ears and nostrils, seeking the warmth of his body. Once, a dead rat had decomposed inside the wall behind his sleeping mat, filling his room with the stench of decay for weeks. He'd vomited daily from the smell but had nowhere else to go.
His life is a living hell, but he tries to fight, saying, "Dying isn't the right way, right?" But even these words ring hollow. What right way existed for someone like him? The world had made it abundantly clear he was unwanted, unneeded, a mistake of biology that should have been corrected long ago. He gives in, fading into the darkness, his last breath escaping in a wet, rattling sigh.
The agony is unbearable—every nerve ending screaming as his brain processes its own destruction—then suddenly gone. His consciousness floats in an endless void. He can't hear anything, feel anything, touch anything. He can't see anything but darkness. Is this death? This emptiness, this nothingness? Did all the religious promises of afterlives amount to just this—an eternal, senseless void?
But then he hears a voice, but in an unknown language. The sounds are melodic, flowing like water, nothing like Japanese or any language he had ever heard on Earth. He tries to piece it together. His brain is foggy, not knowing what to do. The darkness starts to recede, light penetrating his consciousness from all sides.
He opens his eyes. The world is blurry, indistinct, but he can make out shapes. He sees a woman with flowing black hair and a tall man standing beside her. They stand over him, the woman grabbing him gently, saying words that sound like, "My little son," but obviously he can't understand her. Her voice is rich and warm, nothing like the harsh, dismissive tones he'd become accustomed to in his previous life.
The man stands tall, with striking red eyes and long black hair tied back from a face that radiates strength and dignity. He sees that the woman that's holding him looks like she's in her mid-30s, her skin flawless, her eyes a deep violet that seems to hold unfathomable wisdom. The man looks like he's in his mid-30s as well, muscular and commanding in his presence.
"Who are these people? Where am I? How did I get here? Did I get reincarnated, but how, when, and why? Who reincarnated me? Why did they do it?" he thinks to himself, his mind racing with questions he has no way of answering.
He tries to look around the room, but his eyes are just a blur. Everything is too bright, too undefined. He could barely speak, no less move his hands around. It felt like he was a baby, but still with all of his knowledge, but can't do anything. His body won't respond to his commands. He feels fresh, clean fabric against his skin—softer than anything he'd ever touched in his previous life. The air smells of something sweet and floral, not the stench of mold and decay he'd lived with for so long.
Not knowing what to do, trapped in this helpless form, panic rises within him. "What can I do? What should I do?" But exhaustion soon overcomes his anxiety, and he fades off into nothing as his mind drifts and he falls asleep.
For the next year, he's been repeating this cycle, waking up for a couple of minutes to eat and look, but all he sees is a blur, then falls back asleep. He's aware enough to know he's being well-cared for—clean, comfortable, fed whenever he's hungry. So different from the life he left behind, where every basic human need was a desperate struggle.
But when he turns one, something changes. He can see more than a blur. The world comes into focus, revealing a room unlike any he'd seen before. Stone walls adorned with tapestries depicting battles and strange creatures. A ceiling so high it seems to disappear into shadows. Furniture made of rich, dark wood carved with intricate designs.
He could see the world around him now. His mother is holding him, her violet eyes gazing down with pure love. She wears clothing of a style he doesn't recognize—flowing fabrics in deep colors, adorned with symbols that seem to shimmer when they catch the light. He looks at her with a soft expression, not knowing why, but not like he can move his body or his face fully yet. His motor skills are still those of an infant, despite his adult mind.
He thinks to himself, "What happened that night, the night I died? Why did I die? How could I have died? Who killed me? Did they do it on purpose or was it an accident?" The memories of his death are vivid and horrifying, the sensation of his skull cracking open still fresh in his mind despite the time that has passed. He has too many questions, and no answers seem forthcoming.
Another year has passed, and he starts to crawl around. He cannot walk because of his big head and his small body, the proportions all wrong for proper balance, so he starts crawling to get around. The stone floors are always clean and warm beneath his hands, not like the filthy, cold concrete of his former apartment. He can think more often now, his mind clearer, and see the world with growing precision. He doesn't fall asleep so quickly, and he starts eating baby food, soft porridges and mashed fruits with flavors he's never experienced before, not his mother's breast milk.
He starts to think to himself, "Wow, this is kind of amazing. Maybe this new life could be interesting." For the first time in what feels like forever, he feels something like hope stirring in his chest. The constant fear and despair that had been his only companions in his previous life seem distant now, like a nightmare that loses its power in daylight.
Before he can say anything else, movement in the courtyard visible through an arched window catches his eye. He sees his father practicing with a sword, the blade catching sunlight and sending flashes across the stone walls. "He has good moves, good style, good rhythm," he notes, watching with growing fascination. His father moves the sword with agility better than anything he has seen in his entire life, the blade becoming almost an extension of the man's body.
His father starts doing moves that he doesn't even know, fighting styles, sword styles that he doesn't even recognize. The blade sometimes seems to leave trails of light in the air, defying the physics he understood from his previous world. The man leaps impossibly high, spinning in mid-air before landing with perfect grace. He thrusts the sword forward, and a burst of energy shoots from the tip, shattering a stone target twenty feet away.
"This is not Japan. This is not even Earth," he realizes with growing certainty. "This must be a completely different world. These fighting techniques, the strange energy, the architecture—none of it resembles anything I've ever seen." The realization should be terrifying, but after the life he'd led, any change seems preferable.
His mom calls out a name, her voice melodic and warm: "Ash!" she calls out, looking around the room until her eyes fall on him.
"Yes, that's my name in this world. Ash. It's a unique name. I never thought I'd be given such a short and unpopular name. I'll take it. Maybe I can start over and not live a life like I did before." The thought brings something close to peace. A new name, a new body, a new world—perhaps a new chance.
Before he can say another word, he loses his balance as he tries to peer further out the window. He slips and falls, landing on his head against the stone floor. The impact itself doesn't hurt much—his new body seems more resilient than his old one ever was—but he gets trauma from when he got hit by the truck. It starts bringing back terrible memories: the sound of his skull cracking, the sensation of brain matter exposed to open air, the indifference of passersby as he lay dying.
The flashback is so vivid he can almost feel the truck hitting him again, can almost smell his own blood pooling on the asphalt. He shakes his head violently and says, "No," the first word he's managed to vocalize in this new life.
His mom hears him and runs over, her face etched with concern. "Are you OK?" she asks, her words somehow making sense to him now despite the foreign language. Her hands are gentle as they check him for injuries, so different from the rough handling he'd known in his previous life. No one had ever shown such concern for his well-being before.
Ash's mother picks him up, cradling him close to her chest. He can feel her heartbeat, steady and strong. "You can't hurt yourself like that," she says softly, "but just to make sure you're OK, I'll do a spell."
Ash thinks to himself, "What do you mean, spell?" The concept is foreign to him, something from fantasy books and movies, not reality.
She puts out her hand, palm facing his forehead, and a green glow starts surrounding the area. The light is warm and comforting, nothing like the harsh fluorescent lights of the free clinic where doctors had dispassionately prodded at his diseased body. The green energy seeps into him, and he feels the trauma and fear dissolving, replaced by a profound sense of calm and safety.
He feels like the trauma has disappeared, the terrible memories of his death still present but stripped of their emotional power. He feels warm inside as his little baby teeth shine in a smile, his first genuine smile in either life. His hair being moved around in different places by an unseen force, his eyes sparkle with excitement seeing the magic in this world—real magic, not sleight of hand or illusion.
He thinks to himself, "This isn't Earth, is it? This is somewhere else entirely. A place where magic is real, where swords can channel energy, where people can heal with a touch." And for the first time in either of his lives, he feels something like gratitude for whatever cosmic force had given him this second chance, this opportunity to live in a world so different from the hell he had known.