Chapter 1

I was dying, but I wasn't scared. I wasn't happy about it – I hadn't even reached the legal drinking age for god's sake – but I wasn't going to fight it. No matter how good modern medicine was it would never be able to patch me up, not when I was currently staring at a morbid collage of my guts on the pavement. I was more worried about my family and how they would react to my death. I feel sort of guilty for doing this to them, which sucked because now I was going to die with regrets.

It didn't hurt though, so that was something.

I saw something shift in the corner of my eye and my eyes were automatically drawn to it.

It was some kid, no older than 10, that had propped himself up on his scrapped up forearms and was staring at me in horror. I had pushed him out of the way when that stupid drunk driver.

Bingo.

"Kid," I managed to rasp out, "not your… fault."

He eyes widened slightly, so I guess he could hear me. Time to pass on my last message.

"Tell… family… I love… them… K'ay?"

It took a couple seconds, but he gave a slight nod.

Finally, I was done. I felt a small, but real, smile grow on my lips.

"Than…ks"

I had no regrets.

I was ready to die.

And I did.

What I wasn't ready for was my rebirth.

It was dark, I couldn't hear anything, I couldn't move all that much, I was floating in warm, thick something but I was oh, so comfortable. I never really believed in the afterlife but this is quite nice. It doesn't seem like any religion really got the whole afterlife thing right though, which is a little funny if you ask me. All those wars about religion, anti-gay religious fervor, Islamist extremists and so on were for nothing. Hell, even the atheists were wrong. Humans do seem to have a soul after all; it's just that we all just end up floating in squishy darkness for eternity. Huh. When you think about it this is an odd way to spend eternity.

I don't know how long I floated there, just pondering everything and nothing at all. Despite the lack of, well, anything, it wasn't all that boring here so I didn't mind.

Then came the squeezing sensation.

It was short and not too strong, so at first I thought I imagined it. Then it came again, and again, and again; Each time stronger and longer than the last.

This was weird.

I wasn't too worried though. What could I do? I was dead, so I'd just have to go along with whatever the universe decided it wanted me to do. Despite my decision to just go with it, the squeezing sensation still weirded me out. This whole situation weirded me out, I mean what the hell? This afterlife made absolutely zero sense.

Then the squeezing became a constant and I felt myself be pushed through a tube that was way too small for my body. I won't even begin to describe the awful feeling of those slimy walls, but really that wasn't what made the squeezing so terrible. It had become painful.

Why the hell was I feeling pain? I was supposed to be dead for God's sake!

Then I felt ice-cold air brush against my skull. Oh no, I so don't want to go to that cold place. Why couldn't I stay in the dark, warm place?

If the universe heard me, it sure as hell didn't listen. I was pushed farther into the horrible windy place. It was freezing and also incredibly bright, so much so that I couldn't actually see anything other than the burning light. If the dark liquid I came from could be compared to like living in pillow, this new hell would be like living a snowy field under a spotlight.

It wasn't not pleasant, to say the least.

Then I was suddenly hoisted up, without warning, and slapped.

I yelped in pain at the sudden assault on my person (which, by the way was traumatic enough on it's own. Suddenly finding out I still had a body to hit was freaking me out).

Or at least I tried to; Instead a horrid screeching wail came out. Oh my. Is this what happens when you don't talk for a long time?

Then I was flipped around and passed between, well, what felt like giant hands weirdly enough, before being wrapped up like a burrito and shoved against something warm. The warmth was appreciated, and the soft humming coming from it was soothing. Curious about my surroundings, I tried to move my weirdly dysfunctional body and open my eyes. The moving part didn't work, but I managed to open my eyes long enough to register a blurry shape that my mind immediately registered as a face surrounded by a blurry dark halo of hair.

A ginormous face.

Ummm… Ok then.

I was getting a sinking feeling that this wasn't the afterlife I was making it out to be.

Lets see…

Lived in warm dark squishiness for a long time? Check

Pushed out through a tube? Check

No control of my body? Check

Blurry vision? Check

Huge humans? Check

Realization dawned on me; I wasn't dead, I was a baby.

I looked back up into the face of my (new) mother, shocked and slightly wary. This woman carried me for nine months and gave birth to me, but she wasn't my mom! My mom was out there, somewhere, grieving the death of her daughter, not giving birth to a baby!

Just as I thought this, I felt a hand softly stroke my cheek and heard rapid electronic beeping noise. It sounded like a… Oh my god that sounded like a heart monitor. My little body was yanked away from my (not!) mother as I processed the implications of the beeping monitor. Despite being slightly bitter and confused about my new mother, I was still worried about her. There was a small part of my brain felt very attached to her, plus I didn't want her to die because she gave birth to me. Guilt twisted my insides as I realized that this poor women, who loved her child so much she was going to die for it, didn't realize that child was being inhabited by a grown woman that resented being given birth too. While I was very aware that I never chose to do this, the guilt pulsing through my body remained. If this woman, my new mother, died today…

I don't know if it was the guilt, panic or stress of going through rebirth that made me pass out, all I know is that after that moment I was dead to the world.

I spent a few weeks in the hospital – an unusually accurate time estimate since someone had decided to put a calendar up and cross of the days with a black marker so I could count each day that passed – but I never saw my (not!) mother again.

After a couple days though, I realized that I hadn't seen my (not!) father either, which sparked my curiosity. Maybe he was dead, or maybe he and my mother weren't together anymore. Or maybe it wasn't him that was keeping away, maybe I was born premature or something and he couldn't see me. This was all just conjecture of course; I really had no idea what was keeping my new dad away. I also had another puzzle to figure out as I waited, one that was proving to be ridiculously troublesome despite sounding simple. I was trying to figure out what language everyone spoke, but it seems that nobody spoke above a whisper due to the room being filled with volatile wailing time bombs (I can't say I'm a big fan of kids, despite now being one) and I never heard more that a short murmur from any adult.

About a week of straining my ears, a hulking male took me home. Actually, everyone qualified as "hulking" compared to me, and I wasn't very good at estimating size from this new angle so I can't say if he was particularly big or not. I did learn something important though when he came to pick me up: I was in Japan.

The nurse had taken me outside the room and spoke to him loud enough that I was finally able to confirm that, no, they weren't speaking English, and identify the new language.

The man didn't say much to me after taking me home. The first few months of my life I only ever saw him a handful of times. Some woman, other than the one who gave birth to me sadly, fed me and cleaned my diapers. (I don't know if I'll ever fully recover from that humiliation). In fact, I saw so little human interaction that I just felt relieved when someone would answer my cries, even if it was a brief and frigid human contact.

This was a good thing though, in some ways. I knew there was no way I could pass for a normal child, so not having parents that cared would still let me slip under the radar and would give me a free pass later in life for why I don't feel any love for my guardians. While the lack of human interaction would be detrimental to a normal baby's growth (or so I though, like I said I'm not fond of little brats so I know nothing about how children grow other than as they get older, they get bigger) I was going to be fine, or so I hoped. I was a loner before, but I was a functioning adult so the pain and loneliness I was feeling worried me. I never craved human contact like this before, and I'm not so stupid as to chalk this up to the stress of being reborn. Something was fundamentally different about me now; I could feel myself having thoughts and urges that were so juvenile it was embarrassing. Maybe I had an adult soul, but my brain was still that of a baby.

In the end, every day was a battle between my body, which wanted to do some very embarrassing baby things, and my spirit, which refused to submit to the humiliation. The baby in me never stood a chance, "mind over matter" after all.

In the end though, my victory only resulted in me being a very calm baby. It was a little weird, but no one seemed to notice so I counted it as a win.

With my newfound control, I was able to hear, see, and learn anything. The baby brain helped with this, and I sucked up information like a sponge. Seriously, the difference in brainpower between a child and an adult is huge: I was able pick up tons of vocab and grammar rules within one week by listening to my guardians as they romped around the house, and had no trouble remembering them! The combination of rationality and my newfound genius brain made my language skills ridiculously good. Soon I learned a lot of things about my new world through that, the most important being my name: Saito Akira.

I liked it. It wasn't too girly and wasn't too complicated or weird.

I also learned about my family situation. It seems that the woman who took care of me was my aunt, and the man my uncle by marriage, and neither liked me very much. From what I understood, my uncle seemed a little too fond of my mother, who ran off with "that man", as they called him, and married my aunt as a substitute. Now, no one actually said that, but I could read between the lines. Turns out I also had any older cousin, name Ryuuji, who I had never seen (but boy had I heard him, that little shit was loud) because my aunt didn't want him associating with the "whore's daughter".

That made me mad. My birth mother was special to me, even if I didn't see her as my mom. When I remembered her hand that stroked my face with such care and how she had sacrificed her life to give birth to me, I felt nothing but respect. I had no doubt that she had been a strong, loving woman, and I would not tolerate any disrespect for her. I felt responsible for her memory and I would never forget her love or her sacrifice, even after my next death. It was the least I could do.

Months blurred together, but soon enough I got control of my body and started to practice crawling, and then walking. They still hadn't actually let me onto the floor, instead they just kept me pinned in my rickety little cradle, so I practiced by walking and crawling around in the tiny enclosure.

When I mastered that, I started trying to climb out of the cradle, which proved to be impossible. I didn't expect it to work, exactly, but I had hoped that I wouldn't have to rely on the whim of a family that obviously wished I had never been born. Still, I continued to try, even if it was just to alleviate the mind-numbing boredom.

I also liked concentrate on feeling out where people where around the house. I never could do it before, but now it seemed like I could feel people's presence through the wall. I was half convinced I was imagining it, but it was amusing so I didn't think to hard.

One day, after I had learned to walk, they let me out of the cradle. It seems that my silence was actually bothering the neighbors, who were only now showing the slightest concern now, after five months (my aunt seemed particularly amused by that, but I was too satisfied that she'd let it slip how old I was to be offended).

They pulled me outside and paraded me around outside for an hour or so, explaining that I had been a "weak child" and they had been wary of taking me out in case "something happened", but luckily I was "all better now".

Yeah, right.

Whatever, I just concentrated on charming the locals enough that they would remember me and force my guardians to let me out more, incase the townspeople got suspicious. I responded to their coos with little gurgles and smiles, and sometimes went as far as to grab and gnaw on little bits and ends when appropriate. It was too easy; By the end I had over a dozen adults wrapped around my little finger.

I also observed my surroundings, which proved to be very exciting. Wherever I was living was nothing like where I had grown up in my previous life.

'There is so much to see! So much to learn!' I told myself.

But I didn't feel excited, all I could feel was sadness.

The past was the important, it made me who I am, but I knew fixating on it would only bring me more pain. Everyone back home would have wanted me to be happy, and when I joined up with them in Nirvana (that is how the whole reincarnation thing worked, right?) I would be able to tell them wonderful stories about all of the new and beautiful things I had done and seen.

I had lived a normal life: I had struggled and suffered, but also been loved and triumphed, and I had died to protect someone. It was a good life, I should be grateful for all my good fortune, and yet…

I felt like I had lost everything. Everything I had every worked for, wanted or had was gone now and I missed it. I missed my family, my friends, my freedom and my grown body. I missed my favorite foods and my native language. And as much as I tried to reason with myself I still felt an aching hole in my chest.

I just couldn't quite feel happy.

Sure my aunt and uncle weren't helping in that regard, but I'd be lying to myself if I said that they were the main cause for my pain. They were just two people in a loveless marriage with a lot of emotional baggage, and they were taking a bit of it out on me. I could handle it. I was strong.

I was strong.

I will be strong.

All my hard work charming the locals ended up being for nothing.

As I grew older everyone, aunt, uncle and locals included, started to get scared of me.

At first, I didn't realize what was going on but then I saw my reflection and I shuddered.

My face, my eyes in particular, were just so wrong.

They were a sharp, yellowy-green that seemed to glow when he light hit them just right, which was creepy enough as is, but it was my expressions and the way my whole face just… moved, that made it bad. At first, the half lidded eyes and unsmiling face could be seen as sleepy or lazy, but when you looked again (which you did, thanks to my eye color) I looked more like a cat peering at a wounded mouse – calculating, apathetic and way, way too smart. My body was that of a child, but my expressions and mannerisms were that of an adult; One with a lot of confidence and the knowledge to back it up.

My nearly perfect Japanese didn't help my creepy-mini-genius vibe either.

Woops.

There was really wasn't anything I could do though; I couldn't relearn something so ingrained and instinctual.

This all happened when I was about nine months to a year old.

There was a tense interlude, of a about a year, where nobody knew what to do with me.

I tried to nice and polite to everyone, but it just seemed to throw them even more off balance.

So much so that on day, when I offered a toy car to Ruuji (who was turning out to rather adorable) when we were at the park in my naturally off-putting way, my uncle just snapped and slapped me. Hard.

So hard that I flew back and skidded across dirt.

The entire park was silent, all the parents and kids just stared at me as I lay on the ground, clutching my cheek. Was no one going to help me?

I didn't even feel any pain; I must have been in shock.

"Oji-san?" I asked, eyes wide with confusion.

Had he really just… For offering Ryuuji a toy?

He was just standing there in frozen, as if he couldn't believe what he'd done either, but my question seemed to knock him out of it, but not in a good way.

"Don't call me that, you little freak!" He spat.

I just sat there and looked around. No one did anything to help me: the kids looked to their parents as if to ask "What should I do?" and the parents faces slowly morphed from blank shock to… was that satisfaction?

I focused back on my uncle, afraid to look at them anymore.

"I… What did I do Oji–"

I abruptly stopped when I saw him start to stalk towards me, face twisted in fury.

"I mean Keiji-Oji-san," Nope, still mad.

"Keiji-san?" I whispered, voice cracking, as I tried to shrink away from him.

He stopped a few feet away, his face a mask of pure sadistic satisfaction.

"That's right, you little freak."

The interlude had ended; The wariness that had characterized my life was gone. Now they all knew my weakness – that I was still physically a child – and had an example of what to do when I was scaring them…

My new life didn't look so good anymore.