I was getting quite stuck with how to write this story despite being so excited for it and so caused the radio silence. I figured out 3 years later that it needs a darker aspect to it. So here we are.
unedited and i have a not so stellar track record with grammar but we'll just pretend.
Chuck a review my way? It strokes my ego after all haha.
published: 29/01/2021
When I was four the rock incident occurred.
Picture this. A tiny little me ( or some kid who's supposed to be) wandering about the playground and trying desperately to avoid the little snot covered demons around me.
I'm minding my own business and oh look there's a peculiar rock on the ground. My child hand barely touches it, but it is enough.
When I come to, every memory of who I once was has settled or more like seared itself into my mind and into my very being.
I blink and I am no longer Haru Hinata- 4 years old and dreadfully normal. I am 23 years old and with a name that I cannot remember.
I adjusted quickly to my environment surprisingly enough
I knew that my name wasn't always Haru and despite the fact that I could not remember my original name I knew who I was before I entered this life. I remembered the years I spent with my then-parents and my then-friends, I remembered the way I felt, albeit the emotions are dulled by now.
Sometimes a memory would rise from the depths of my mind and I would be plunged back into that life where I wasn't me but I was. It's a strange feeling. Y'know having a plethora of memories from two seperate lives.
At first I found it hard to distinguish between what was then and what was now. I'd peer into the face of my now-mother and be struck with a sense of wrongness, a sense of wrongness so strong that I couldn't even begin to understand or decipher it
For years I was wrapped up in my own musings. I shied away from the kids who were 'my age' and I grew distant with my new mother. They couldn't understand why her seemingly normal young boy had suddenly become secluded and so very unaffectionate. There was no way that she could understand, not unless I or some other unfortunate displaced person told her. All she knew was that at the age of four I changed, and then everything began to go wrong.
The house burnt down when I reached 5. Mother was still inside, but I didn't tell anyone that. She was already dead. He was also gone too, having fled before the match had even hit the ground. I never understood the reasoning behind why she had struck that match, but the look in her eyes told me enough.
I did have the memories of the 4 year olds body I hijacked and of course I had the memories of the short year we had spent together. Mother was dreadfully normal- in a world where 'normal' was frowned upon. She cooked dinner, worked late, made me breakfast and packed lunches and tucked me in at night. A loving mother.
But on that day her eyes were bright with an emotion I couldn't name. Something so strong it twisted her face into a grotesque impression of what it once was. Unnatural. That wasn't her. She looked at me unblinkingly and when she struck the match she smiled.
"It's for the best. Just wait for me, okay?"
I nodded and she dropped it.
Her body shined so bright that the image would imbed itself into my eyelids for years to come.
The authorities ruled it as an accident but it was quite clearly a murder. At least to me. It probably looked like a suicide- I mean who could force someone who didn't want to die to kill themself?
'at least two now that I look back on this'
They chattered around me, unaware that I understood everything they were saying.
"An accident...the poor boy"
"No mother. No other family. His father…"
"He's so quiet, it must be the shock"
It wasn't 'the shock', thank you very much. I think my death and rebirth was enough to permanently mark me already.
Although, I didn't feel much when she set herself ablaze. Merely a passing feeling of shock and worry. Frankly I was too preoccupied at the time with the thoughts of 'who the hell is this and how is he doing that?'
Turns out I'm an idiot.
Now now, it's nice to be considered a child genius in this life when you were so painfully under average as an adult in the past. How could I ever pass up a chance to have a compliment thrown my way?
But no amount of suposséd child geniusness and subpar intelligence could have clued me into the fact that this was not the world I had died in.
I - quite literally- was slapped with the truth.
With a tentacle if you want to get specific.
It's ridiculous how I managed to lie to myself for so long. A highly convenient class of children with powers that weren't flashy and minimal exposure to the outside world did that. And of course there was the fact that I had only been conscious for a year where I was too busy agonizing over my rebirth to care about the people around me.
So when my child sized brain got to whirring after seeing that horribleterriyingslightlyamusing? thing of a man, everything just clicked.
That girl with the pink ribbons who had abnormally big eyes that were overwhelmed with the sheer size of her pupils.
The boy with the white hair and hands that seemed to glow and that I had written off as a trick of the light.
That random baby in this stupid comedy show Mother would watch who seemed to burp a gas that was suspiciously green.
And I denied it all.
Shit
I was beginning to wish I had stayed in that house when it went up in flames.
