Birth, it was a strange feeling. Babies from the age of 0-3 do not think they only feel. Inside the womb for the last couple of days before it, all I did was dream about my life. I would feel the emotions of all of them.
While my soul thinks my body feels.
It was this disconnect that stopped me from going insane. Every bit of joy and every bit of sadness. I felt them in a way that was so raw I couldn't process it. Not like I could even if I had tried to.
And so when it was time for me to leave the womb, I felt my body getting pushed out of my womb and into the outside world.
It was warm, and quite tight. It wasn't a feeling I could describe. Perhaps it could be equated to the feeling of being in a cave of hot spring water and wearing a wetsuit?
When I left the 'entrance' a wave of overwhelming stimuli. I felt the air touch every fibre of my being. The light in my eye was blurry but it felt so raw in my eyes.
After a while I cried and cried and continued to cry until I was out of energy. But I wasn't sure if it was the stimuli or it was a cry of desperation, a cry from the depth of my soul, a wail of relief from being freed from the detached unfeeling abyss.
{-}
It has been a couple of weeks since my birth, 8 weeks to be exact. Certainly a strange string of thought I never knew I would ever have.
So far It has been peaceful and tranquil but ultimately uneventful, being a baby doesn't invite much action after all. However it has been rather enlightening so far; about the situation at hand.
The first nugget of information I had gathered was my name: Fuyu, Fuyuyama, and I was in Japan. While I had my suspicions, nothing concrete was there for me to latch on to until recently.
While my name might have been a clue, thinking logically that wouldn't be enough proof. Afterall i could have been in America with immigrant parents.
What gave it away was the room I was in. Typically babies don't see until 8 weeks after birth and so before I could I just heard -calling my ability to make out noises hearing is stretching the definition- and saw lumps of blurry colours and rough outlines and shapes.
At around 8 weeks I finally regained full sense of sight. I had held off on my final judgement as to where I was until now. The implications were rather severe.
The wooden beams, the bamboo flooring, the paper doors and candles. I was in Japan in the 1850's.
{-}
My mother was unordinary, by 1850ish standards, i think so at least. With a cute face, long straight white hair neatly tied into a loose but snug hair bun, and surprisingly, at the same time not so surprisingly. She was fit and had a slender figure.
However, unmistakably she was exhausted. Her beautiful blue gemstone eyes were tarnished by heavy dark eye bags and the constant sweat from over exerting herself made it horribly obvious that she was working herself to the bone making sure I wouldn't be uncomfortable.
[A burden, I am once more.]
I knew that baby death rates in the times of my current life were depressingly high. So I tried to hold out as long as I could without needing to be breastfeed. Making sure to be the quiet, untroublesome, and generally the best baby I could humanly be.
[After all, this sweet and caring woman didn't deserve me. I didn't deserve her. I SHOULDN'T EVEN BE BREATHING-!]
Breastfeeding was… uncomfortable, but the experience of it had brought some rather concerning issues.
{-}
Laying in my crib -more of a makeshift box with a futon and layers of cloth- i closed my eyes and pondered.
My brain had reverted back to that of a baby. Which isn't surprising considering my experience in the womb.
[Don't think about-]
And that supposedly had… Separated my consciousness.
I subconsciously gritted my teeth -gums- together, clenching my mouth in irritation.
Yet such anger lacked substance.
The current running hypothesis was that i was 2 souls in one body and the soul of Fuyu Fuyuyama was dominant over my previous soul of Baek, Jungheok.
My memories as Jungheok lacked everything, from emotions to attachments to them. They were nothing but something in my brain.
Why was it so… Important? Was it not a blessing? It wasn't dehumanising like my experience in the womb, it wasn't a descent of misery, nor was it a nightmare shrouded in the veil of the endless dark abyss. It wasn't as if I was a vessel of regret and lacked humanity, like before.
This was a golden ticket to be freed from my life as Baek, Jungheok, to be freed from the demons that haunted me for 15yrs.
Was it my pride as a human to hate the lack of… Humanity in this situation?
Was it the almost irritatingly easy banishment of 15yrs of emotional baggage?
Maybe I wanted to keep my identity as Baek, Jungheok. Perhaps I wanted to reclaim my name. To keep my identity, to carry on the nightmare -as emotionally draining and nightmarish it might have been- it would have been me, the real me.
The crushing sense of despair and helplessness might have been a depressingly common occurrence for Baek, Jungheok, but for Fuyuyama, Fuyu? It wasn't.
The usual feelings of bitter resentment for himself never took root, in place of that was,
Fear, would he lose himself in Fuyu? Would Baek, Jungheok die a slow and unfeeling death?
Anger, Why… Why was he even in this situation? What kind of sick sadistic bastard reincarnated him with his memories if all he did was stick him in an Abyss with whatever the soul no brain thing was.
Stress, with the situation being in the forefront of his mind and always being a lingering problem with the added myriad of emotions the silent sobs turned into a wail of a boy's forced descent into misery.
Sadness, bitter resentment, anger, fear, and stress.
Fuyu (Jungheok), Fuyuyama (Baek), cried and cried his heart out. The warm embrace of his mother, the callused but warm and worrying hand of his father stroking his hand in a fathers worry. The hushed sweet lullaby of his mother.
They were all felt, but were tuned out by the dam of emotions that flooded his mind.
And so he cried and cried, he cried his heart out. Until he couldn't cry anymore.
He had cried his soul dry.
{-}
After a couple of weeks had passed since his 'breakdown' he had come to a conclusion that; I, Jungheok Baek and Fuyu Fuyuhama are one in the same.
While he had not carried over anything from his life as Jungheok, he had carried on his ego so to speak.
He held no bitter resentment to his so-called pathetic situation, he still felt something concerning the issue. His personality also carried over, while lacking much of its substance at the base of it all was his personality.
"Fuyu-kun?", the voice that called out for him could only really be described as melodic and eloquent.
"Bwah! Hehehehehe", baby speak was easy enough to fake, the whole ordeal of being a loving and easy to take care of son was arguably harder.
A pleasant giggle escaped from her lips, the lady in front of me was my strange white haired mother.
"Come here, honey.", With a joyful smile, she bent down and extended her arms out and cradled me in her arms and started wrapping me behind her back.
To lighten her workload in my own way I giggled a bit to keep her happy and stayed relatively still. I say, relatively well because I don't think most babies are that still and obedient. So I move my arms around a bit and play with her hair, nothing drastic to hinder her wrapping me up.
[Always a burden, always a hindrance]
"Hmmm~ hmmm~" while humming a mellow tune she went about doing her daily routine as i accompanied her giggling and laughing, her personal moral support.
Our days were usually spent like this, in a blissful routine.
"Dear, I'm home." The tatami door slid open and in came my father.
A man who was impressively tall walked through the unassuming tatami door.
Matt black hair, and once again an unnatural streak of brown adorned his bangs. His hair was neatly tied in a low and messy ponytail.
A narrow and mean eye, and accompanying those dead fish eyes was an expressionless face.
[Your father? Your mother? You stole a baby's identity and you seek happiness from a life that isn't yours?]
"Ah, Fuyu, how are you", his voice was serene, and monotone, as usual, yet as he spoke to me the sheer joy and care in it strung and played at my heartstrings.
"Hehehehe!" I giggled at him, waving my arms towards him.
I'd like to think it was practised and it was all manufactured.
But the warmth filling up my heart was unmistakably happiness.
I had given up looking for a place where I belong, I knew you had to make it yourself.
But, I didn't want to steal a child's soul for this, or did I?
Fuyu, Fuyuyama and Baek, Jungheok were one of the same. Or so I told myself.
[You are a faker, everything you hold on too isn't yours to begin with, Faker]
The days pass by, blissfully and quietly.
"Shall we hold hands and head home?"
"What should we eat tonight?"
"Here's what happened today"
Every Moment i felt my heart being snatched away by them, everyday my lies grew weaker and everyday my laughs were full of life and everyday, was a comedy.
{-}