On a cold rainy night, a young man hurried back home from work.
At the age of twenty-two, Rudy was a recent college graduate struggling with a mundane job.
For the past few months, his daily routine had pretty much consisted of waking up, going to work, eating, sleeping; repeat.
Of course, on a few occasions when he had nothing else to do, he would read novels, watch anime, and play video games.
This had been his norm ever since he graduated and got a job.
In other words, he had been living a monotonous and boring life.
He had no parents, no siblings, and definitely no girlfriend either.
Rudy lost his parents at birth, but his grandparents took it upon themselves to raise him.
However, just before he graduated from college, he lost his grandparents as well, and he had been on his own ever since.
Tonight was a Friday night and that meant he could use the weekends to carry out his most favorite activities.
Of course, his favorite activities were none other than reading novels, watching anime, and playing video games.
With this thought in mind, Rudy hastened up his pace and his shoes splashed against some shallow puddles as he began to strategize how he would spend his weekends.
'Hmm, what anime should I watch this weekend?' He pondered in his thoughts.
'Everyone is talking about the hottest anime in town and I just love the way the protagonist summons an army of the dead with just a single word, 'Erect!!'
'Yeah, maybe I should definitely start watching that anime tonight,'
'But then again, I heard a new RPG game had just been released, maybe I should binge-play it all night while eating instant ramen,'
'Yeah, let's do that tonight,'
Rudy made up his mind on what he would be doing tonight, but unfortunately for him, he had been too deep in his thoughts to notice the speeding truck barreling down towards him from his left.
So, before his ears or brain could register the truck's blaring horn, it was already too late, and his body could only freeze the moment he noticed the blinding headlights heading straight for him.
*Bam!!*
Rudy had died but he suddenly gasped as his body jerked upright and his hands instinctively gripped his throbbing forehead, almost as though it would help stop the headache pounding inside his skull.
His breathing was ragged and it took him a while for him to notice the strange environment he was in.
Looking around, Rudy realized he wasn't on the street and neither was he in his apartment.
Instead, he seemed to be in a small, wooden room and he could even smell the scent of timber filling the air.
Aside from that, Rudy also noticed that the bed beneath him wasn't a mattress, but it was a simple, wooden frame covered with thick furs.
He looked up and noticed the thatched ceiling but turning to his right, Rudy could feel the cool breeze blowing into his room from the opened window and he slowly lowered his hand from his forehead because now he recognized the room that he was in.
He released a deep sigh before muttering to himself.
"... Again,"
'This is the third time this week,'
'I've been having these strange nightmares for the past three days now, and it all started on the day of my seventeenth birthday which happened to be three days ago,'
'At first, I thought they were just nightmares but as time passed, I began to realize that they were actually the memories of my previous life,'
'It turned out I had died seventeen years ago and reincarnated into this world but I had only regained my memories recently,'
One could wonder why he had decided on such a conclusion but the answer to that question was hovering before him.
In front of him, Rudy could see a semi-transparent blue screen hovering midair. At first, he thought he was hallucinating but as time passed he realized what the screen was because he had read about them in light novels in his past life.
Leaving that aside for now, Rudy tried to have a brief recap of everything that had occurred to him since he arrived into this world seventeen years ago.
'Well, nothing much had happened to me since I arrived into this world because just like in my old world, I know little to nothing about my birth parents,'
'I heard they were adventurers who died during a dungeon exploration just months after I was born,'
'But right after they died, my mom's best friend, Helen, raised me alongside her own daughter, Leah, and the three of us have been living together as a family ever since,'
'It turned out my mom was actually a demihuman with rabbit ears because Helen and Leah happened to be demihumans with the same set of ears as well,'
'I guess that would explain why I'm currently living in a settlement called Usagi Village,'
Usagi Village was a small, remote settlement filled with rabbit-eared demihumans and Rudy had been living in this village with Helen and Leah for the past seventeen years.
But now that Rudy had recalled the memories of his past life, he was no longer viewing this world in the perspective of a child, but rather as an adult now.
In other words, he was interested in seeing other towns, cities and settlements of other races inhabiting this world.
He heard this world was inhabited by races like humans, spirits, demons and even demihumans like elves, harpies and even mermaids.
'Oh, thinking about mermaids, it would certainly be nice to see what a mermaid actually looks like in real life,' He mused.
'I bet they'll be just as beautiful as the rabbit-girls living in this village,'
'No, no, no, let's not think about that right now,' Rudy shook his head as he tried to concentrate on what was really important right now.
"Yes, beautiful girls aren't important right now,"
"What's really important is the screen hovering before me," He said before lifting his gaze to take a look at the screen in front of him.
> [TIME REMAINING UNTIL CLASS AWAKENING: TWO HOURS,]