Every morning felt the same — alarm, cold water, a mirror with the image of someone I didn't recognize. Not truly. Just a shell.
I smiled when I had to, a practiced curve of lips. I spoke when I was spoken to, uttering pleasantries that meant nothing. I helped people who never remembered my name, their gratitude fleeting, my impact ephemeral. "The perfect son," they'd coo, unaware of the hollowness. "Kind. Strong. Reliable."
But none knew how I truly saw myself. None heard the silence that echoed when I was alone, a vast, cold expanse where purpose should have been. Every breath felt like a performance, every day a repeated, meaningless script.
Nothing mattered after I failed to protect the one person who truly meant something.
That truth, bitter and all-consuming, had defined Renji Kazama's existence for a month — ever since his father's death. He moved through life like a ghost, tethered only by habit.
Now, a quiet night. Cold air. Streetlights humming. The familiar weight of groceries in one hand, and an emptiness he couldn't name – though he felt it acutely, a dull throb behind his ribs – in the other. Renji walked home — same street, same cracked sidewalk, each step mechanically placed. But something was different tonight. Off. A subtle shift in the air, a prickle on his skin that made the hairs on his arms rise.
Up ahead, a flash of movement. A child had wandered into the road, a tiny silhouette under the harsh glow of the streetlights. His breath hitched.
Then, a sound — fast, mechanical, brutal. The roar of an accelerating truck, its headlights suddenly blinding, bearing down on the unaware figure.
In that instant, something clicked within Renji. It wasn't a thought, not a conscious decision. It was instinct, sharp and undeniable, like a forgotten part of him finally reawakening. This time, he wouldn't fail.
This time, I will save them.
He didn't hesitate.
Groceries hit the ground, spilling across the cracked pavement as his legs moved on their own, a burst of speed he didn't know he possessed, fueled by a desperation that burned away the apathy. He lunged, a desperate, reaching push.
He pushed the child just in time.
He didn't feel the impact. Not at first. There was only the sudden, intense rush of wind, the screech of tires, and then… a strangely muted thud.
And then... nothing. Not pain. Not fear.
Just the pull — something ripping his soul away, somewhere else. A sensation not of tearing, but of being stretched thin, like an elastic band snapping back across dimensions.
Then, a soft, warm darkness. A new kind of silence, filled only by the rhythmic thrum of another heartbeat, a gentle muffled roar that was both comforting and utterly alien. He felt... small. Incredibly, impossibly small. His body was a fragile vessel, and his limbs, when he instinctively tried to move them, flailed without coordination. There was a constant, subtle pressure all around him, a secure embrace, and the faint, sweet scent of something new and vital.
What is this? This isn't… not death. Not life. Not the hospital. This is…
He was alive. But not as Renji Kazama. He was... new. And this newness held a strange, nascent power.
As he gathered his thoughts, a jumble of abstract sensations and fragmented awareness, unfamiliar voices drifted into his muffled perception. They were soft, melodic, filled with an inexplicable warmth.
"He's so cute," a gentle whisper. "Look at his tiny fingers!" another voice chimed, closer now. "Our little Akira Ramou," a deeper, affectionate rumble.
He felt a soft caress, a brush against his cheek, then a gentle lift. He was being held. The voices, brimming with a pure, unreserved affection that felt like a distant, cherished memory he had somehow forgotten he'd experienced, continued to murmur.
Akira Ramou.
The name echoed in his nascent consciousness. It was foreign, yet undeniably his. He wasn't Renji Kazama anymore. The clarity was sudden, stark. He was someone new, reincarnated, reborn into a body that felt alien, yet strangely, intimately connected to the warmth now blossoming within him.
And he remembered. The entirety of Renji Kazama's existence, every mundane detail, every empty interaction, every quiet regret, surged back with startling, painful clarity. But as the past echoed, a quiet resolve settled within him, firm and unyielding: no more. No more hollowness. No more failures. This new beginning, this "Akira Ramou," would live with purpose.