It was a cold and windy night as I walked the streets of Tokyo after getting off work. My cane tapped on the ground steadily as I walked at a moderate pace, not particularly knowing where I was going.

'I can't believe it has been 11 years since I came here,' I thought as the wind blew against me. 'So much time has passed, yet I am still asking myself the same question: Why do I keep going?'

I kept walking for several minutes until it started pouring rain. I sighed and looked up as the rain picked up. 'At least I am wearing my raincoat.'

I kept walking around for a bit before I saw a bridge and got under it for some cover. I leaned against a wall, thinking about what had led up to my current circumstances in life.

I had good parents, a good education, and a 'distinguished' military career. I scoffed at that last one, 'The things we did could hardly be called distinguished,' I think bitterly.

I looked down at my hands; even now, I would wake up in the middle of the night, go to the sink, and wash my hands for hours, hoping to wash the blood off them. No matter what I did, it stained my hands.

I close my eyes and slide down the wall to sit down while I think. When I was younger, all I wanted to do was help people. I went into the military after September Eleventh, thinking I would be able to do just that.

I had just finished getting a Master's Degree in Theoretical Physics, and instead of putting that to good use back home, I decided to join the military. A choice I was still regretting 15 years later.

So, you may ask yourself, why have I spent a decade working at a run-down clinic in Tokyo when I could have gotten a job somewhere better?

At first, it was to try and undo all the evil I did in the military; I wanted to use the medical training I had gotten in the military to do some good. But now, I didn't know; I still felt as guilty as I did when I started.

I have killed so many people. It didn't matter who they were; if the military gave us an order, we followed it out. We indiscriminately killed men, women, and children, if they were suspected of harboring enemy soldiers, which the government would cover up.

But the government couldn't cleanse my guilty soul. It ate away at me for years; we were no better than the people we were fighting. When I lost my leg, I was almost done with my service, so I was discharged a year early.

After I was discharged from the military, I attended the funerals of the men who had died during the mission where I lost my leg. After I visited their families, I got a one-way flight to Japan.

In my shame, I fled as far away from my old life as possible. My parent's tried to get me to say, but I couldn't look them in the eyes anymore. I felt like a failure; The son they had raised to do what was right had become a murderer.

I find myself tearing up, and I quickly wipe my eyes. I looked out at the rain, which had gotten worse during my thinking. I sigh before using my cane to stand up, deciding to head back home and sleep.

Several minutes into my walk, I stand at a crosswalk waiting for it to turn green when suddenly the wind picks up, making the rain louder, and then I hear kids arguing with one another, cars passing by, and sirens nearby.

My breath gets stuck in my throat as I freeze up. 'Not right now!" I think, panicked as I try to calm myself down, my hands trembling. I am often surprised at how many noises turn into the sounds of women and children screaming as you shoot them.

I stand there like a statue for a few seconds, trying to control my breath so I don't have a panic attack. Eventually, the light turned green, and I breathed out before continuing my walk home.

I picked up my pace, and my cane was no longer a tempo but a fervent and irregular tapping. I needed to get home before I had a panic attack.

I walked for several minutes, getting closer to my apartment, but as I was walking, I suddenly slipped on a puddle and tumbled to the ground, hitting my head.

'What just happened?' I think to myself, feeling disoriented. I rub my head before opening my eyes and looking around. 'Oh, right, I slipped and fell.'

When I looked at my hand saw some blood on it; I sighed and closed my eyes, 'Great, I'm bleeding.' I sit on the ground for a few minutes, lost in my thoughts, and disoriented from hitting my head.

Suddenly, I hear a voice ask, "Are you okay, sir?" I jolt from my disoriented state before looking toward the voice, 'I swear I recognize that voice.'

"Is that you, Nanahoshi?" I ask. Then I see the realization on her face, "Oh, it's you, Mr. Owens. I didn't recognize you." She responded before coming and helping me stand up.

"Hey, Nanahoshi, How do you know this old gaijin?" One of her friends asked. "Don't be so rude, Shinohara! This guy runs that small clinic several minutes south of here."

I knew Nanahoshi since I often saw her come in with her Mom, who was extremely sickly. "Thanks for helping me up, Nanahoshi. It is good to see you again. How has your mother been recently? It has been a couple of weeks since I saw her around."

She frowns, pausing momentarily before answering, "She is getting worse; she has been struggling to walk. We are trying to make it in on Saturday."

Nanahoshi's mother had a neurodegenerative disease which has slowly been eating away at her. The family knew that all we could do was make her more comfortable. "I could always try to make it over for a home visit if she is having difficulty moving," I tell her.

"Thanks, Mr. Owens, but she is set on making it back in herself. You know her; still very energetic even when her body is failing her." She said this with a smile, but I could tell that it didn't reach her eyes.

'It must be hard watching one of the people you love slowly dying when you can't do anything about it.' I thought before a dark voice in my head said, 'It doesn't take a rocket scientist to find that out; you should know you watched many people die when you could do something about it.'

"Well, Mr. Owens, if you are okay, we need to be heading home. Hopefully, I will see you on Saturday when I bring my Mom into the clinic." She tells me with faux cheer, which snaps me out of my thoughts.

"Ah, yes, I look forward to seeing you both. You all have a safe walk home," I tell them before they start walking again.

After a few seconds of standing there, I shiver, feeling the cold wind blow against my wet clothes. 'I better get home before I get a cold.' I tell myself before I start walking, this time more slowly; I didn't want to have an intimate meeting with the ground again after all.

I hear Nanahoshi and her friends talking ahead of me. Well, it was mostly her friends, then I realized, 'Oh, They must have been the ones I heard arguing earlier.'

I walked quietly behind them for the next several minutes before the next crosswalk appeared. As the kids were about to cross, the signal turned red. But since they were caught up in their conversation, they kept going forward, unaware of their current danger.

I tried to call out to them, to tell them to stop, but my voice only came out as a faint whisper due to how cold I was, and it was quickly drowned out by the rain.

I picked up my pace to try and catch them, my cane fervently tapping on the pavement. When I got to the edge of the crosswalk, they were halfway through the street. I turned and saw an out-of-control truck barrelling down the street toward them.

I knew it was too late to call them, but I couldn't just do nothing, 'I have spent enough of my life feigning neutrality.'

I drop my cane and start jogging toward them as fast as I can while trying to keep my balance on my prosthetics. I hear the truck getting closer. My heartbeat sped up. After I made it to them, I quickly shoved Nanahoshi and her friends out of the way.

Suddenly, I felt myself go flying. 'I made it,' was my last thought before my world turned black.

"…ll a… a…l…ce…!" 'Who's voice is that? Where am I?' I wonder. 'I feel awful.' I tell myself as I sit there with my eyes closed trying to remember where I was.

"...r. O...ns... w...e... ...p!" Suddenly, my eyes open. I look and see Nanahoshi over me. Suddenly, I remembered what had happened, the kids, the truck, pushing them out of the way.

'Oh, that's right, I was hit by that truck after pushing them out of the way.' I looked around and saw Nanahoshi's friend and an overweight guy who looked a little younger than I was.

"Mr. Owens, stay awake; the ambulance is on its way." I blink my eyes several times, trying to clear them. 'I feel so tired; maybe it wouldn't hurt too much to go to sleep.'

Suddenly I felt faint, 'Is this what dying feels like?' I ask myself. A part of me had always wondered what dying felt like. After all, It was one thing to kill others and quite another to experience it yourself.

My thoughts go to my parents, 'I never got to say goodbye to them,'

My thoughts went to my family and everyone I left in my shame. 'I am such an idiot; I never got to say goodbye or tell them I loved them.'

'What a worthless life I lived. I had many opportunities to do what I knew was right, yet I always chose wrong.'

I looked around at the people hovering over me,

Then I looked at the faces of the people gathered around me, strangers and people I barely knew, crying for me. Then I felt happy and thought, '

Maybe this is a good thing; at least I could exchange my wretched life for something worthwhile.

But maybe it is good that I was here; at least I could save these kids. Perhaps they will do what I always failed to do.

I close my eyes, 'Maybe this won't be too bad,' I think, feeling tired. Just as I am about to sleep, I hear the man's voice, "Why did you do that?"

I opened my eyes and looked at him, 'Why does he even care?' I ask myself. I sigh and lift my hands; they tremble before me. 'So much blood has touched these hands.'

"I have done so many evil things, and I just want to know how it felt to do something good for once." I feel myself start crying.

I said this to him, but I didn't have a reason when I decided to push them out of the way. So maybe what I said was true, or maybe I wanted redemption, or perhaps I was just crazy and looking for an excuse to die. It doesn't matter anymore anyways; I was about to die anyways.

I closed my eyes feeling weaker and weaker, my breathing getting faint. I heard Nanahoshi telling me that 'the ambulance was almost here' and 'to stay awake,' but I couldn't help myself.

I was ready to rest; even if I didn't know my reason, I finally chose to do something good. I smiled, and finally, the darkness overtook me.

I don't know how, but I gained consciousness again. 'Is this the afterlife? I thought it would be an endless life of punishment for all the evil I had done.'

I couldn't move or feel anything. I couldn't tell how long I was in this state. Honestly, it felt like a daydream, and for all I knew, it could be.

After what felt like ages, I felt myself moving, and then I could feel and move again. 'I feel so sluggish, and what are these voices I hear?' I felt like I was being carried by a giant.

After a few seconds, I opened my eyes and was blinded by the light. When my vision cleared, I saw a blond woman with a look of concern on her face. 'She couldn't be more than twenty.' I think to myself.

I looked right and saw a man about the same age, and he, too, had the same concern on his face. Then I looked down at myself and saw my small body and arms.

Surprised, I tried to say something, but all I could manage was, "Waahh!" Then I heard the man and woman talking, so I looked up at them, and they both looked relieved and kept saying stuff to me,

'What is this language? I haven't ever heard anything like it.' I asked myself. I didn't speak many languages, but I could at least recognize the ones I couldn't speak.

'Reincarnation, I had heard people talk about it, but I always thought it was goofy and brushed it off as insane ramblings of people who wanted hope after they died.

Yet here I was in the arms of a woman, my mother, being doted on by her while my father made faces at me, trying to get a reaction; sadly, all he got was a face of confusion if my face looked anything like I felt right now.

Then I felt exhausted; being born was quite tiring. So, I yawned, which caused my mother to coo at me before kissing me on the cheek. After a few minutes, she laid me down to sleep, and my father blew the candles out, and they both left me in my room.

While trying to fall asleep, my mind was running wild from what I saw. 'Either I was reincarnated in the past or in a world still in medieval times.' I think to myself. The indiscernible language made me think it was probably the second.

'If it is a different world, maybe there is magic in this world.' I thought with excitement. I might be jaded, but I was still a boy once and was always intrigued by the thought of magic.

Most of all, I was reeling at the fact that I got another chance. 'I don't know how or why I was reincarnated, but I have another chance to do what I failed in my first life. I can do good and help others.

After thinking for several minutes, my fatigue catches up with me. Just as I am about to fall asleep, I hear my dark thoughts, 'You will never escape the blood on your hands; it will follow you to your final rest. You aren't a good person; you are just a miserable wretch? Why even try? You will only fail in the end, just like last time.'

I open my eyes and lift my small hands above me, only to see the same blood stains on my hands. I end up crying myself to sleep silently.