Sometimes, I think back and wonder how I survived it all the first time round, let alone the second. Life that is. I was born in a smallish town in Japan called Karakura, to Miroku and Yumiko Ashigawa. Do you believe in reincarnation? I didn't, until I turned three and realised that I wasn't just thinking of myself as Hiroko Ashigawa, but as someone else entirely. Not that anyone else knew. Anyone would tell you that 'Yes, that's little Hiro-chan. She looks just like her mother.'
But sometimes I would wake up and expect to be taller. Curvier. Have a lighter colour hair. I would remember speaking English with the same fluency that I spoke Japanese, even though I had yet to start school and we didn't learn English until grade three. I remember another set of parents, siblings, and pets. And I remembered dying. Boy, was that a slap in the face at three and a half years of age.
I spent a great deal of my early childhood in and out of the dojo. My father, a martial arts teacher, started me on Karate, Judo and Kick-boxing as soon as I could walk. Having never done any sort of fighting in the first life, I took to it like a… Well. Simply put, I didn't. However, Miroku was insistent that I did my training diligently, so while I would never be the genius that my Dad was, by the time I started High School I didn't totally suck.
As I got older, I realised that things were pretty much the same as when I had left. It actually seemed like the world had reversed a little. All the same technology was there, albeit with different names – Pineapple instead of Apple - but where I had expected advances to be made from what I remembered, things seemed stagnant. I didn't realise exactly what had happened until I took a good hard look at the date and well. I had gone back in time. I had gone back exactly twenty five years in time, which coincidentally (or not) was also when I had died.
Holy crap. Could I meet myself? How the heck would I explain that? Hi, I'm you. Or I'm you when you die and become me. Thinking about it gave me a headache, so I didn't bother with it too much. Later, I would figure out that who or whatever put me into this situation would never allow something that could mess up the balance of the universe happen so, no I would not be able to meet myself. The thought stayed with me for a number of years though.
School was interesting for me. While I remembered certain things from my past life, being taught those things in a different language confused me. Luckily, that confusion made me seem like a slightly above average student rather than a genius, which I was not. I just had a twenty five- or was it thirty one- year head start on my fellow students. The one area that I excelled at was in English. My memory of the language that I had spoken for longer than I had been alive (this time round) was perfect. However, along with the memories of the past life came the tact of an adult. Or in other words, I fudged.
I mentioned that I was born and raised in Karakura Town? Yes, that Karakura Town. Did I realise it that the time? No. In fact, even though I had been seeing the dead for a number of years, I didn't think about it until I met Ichigo Kurosaki on my first day of school at Karakura High. Where my immediate reaction was to get the hell out because I knew that things were going to go nuclear in a matter of months, if it hadn't already. My town and all the people in it – my family- were going to die. And the only person stopping that from happening was a fifteen year old, orange haired punk.