1 The Beginning

'Damn, it is hot out here' - thought Amit Kumar as he was walking down the street. It was a regular hot summer day. Amit was going to nearest grocery store to stock up some necessities. Due to the worldwide pandemic of corona virus many countries were forced to lockdown, causing many problems to regular citizens. Most of the people were lucky, staying indoors, in their homes with their families. Amit was one of those unlucky ones who were stranded outside of their home regions due various reasons. In his case it was work. Though the situation was concerning, Amit did not think of it much. His family was safe and sound un their home. His older brother made sure to take all precautions and safety measures. His mother, though old was a fit woman in her late fifties. They were concerned about him as he lived alone, but he ensured them enough to not worry too much. He procured enough supplies for 1.5 to 2 months barring some necessities and could survive easily. Amit was an average guy. He was from a middle-class family. His father died when he was one year old, from then on his mother brought up his elder brother and him. He grew up with all the ups and downs of a regular family. He was above average academically but sucked at sports. From childhood he was a quiet one. He did not like socializing much. He was as his teacher called him once an introvert. He did not mind though. Although he had friends they were few in number but all of them were close. So social-distancing did not bother him. He just missed his family and the few friends of his. So he spent his days chatting with friends and family, binge watching TV shows, movies, anime and just lazing around. All in all Amit was happy with his life. Although he fantasized about going to fantasy worlds of movies, tv shows, manga, anime like every other guy, he never really wanted it at the cost of his current life. He was not some prince charming or invincible hero saving the world but he had his own place, his own piece of life in this convoluted and complex world. This day the sun was blazing down on earth and all Amit wanted to do was to finish up his trip to the market fast and go home. 'Maybe I will just re-watch Breaking Bad today' - thought Amit.

He was about 20 minutes from the market when suddenly he started feeling uncomfortable and nauseated. 'Is there something wrong with me or it just the heat?' - he thought. When suddenly his head started to spin and he started to hyperventilate. All he could do was to sit down and trying to make himself comfortable. But no matter what he did the situation only worsened. Soon he had to lie down on the street as he slowly started loosing sensation in his legs. There was no one on the street. He went to take out his cellphone to call emergency number but he couldn't even control his hands, his hands just spasmed. He wanted to scream in the hope that someone might hear him and come to help, but all that escaped from his mouth was a pitiful groan. 'Will I die here like random dog with no one to save me?' - he thought with desperation amd anxiety. He knew he was losing his senses slowly but could not do anything about it. Amit was slowly felling faint. His thoughts were slowly being incoherent and he could not think straight. All of his 25 years of life started flashing in front of his eyes. The memories of his childhood, his days in school, the happy memories of his family, the joy and fun he had when was among his friends, his college days and his pitiful short romantic life. It was like a movie playing on fastest playback speed. He could see all his life and emotions, joy, sorrow, love, happiness, anger, satisfaction, regret, everything. Soon he started feeling weightless and after a few moments he lost his consciousness.

After an unknown amount of time he started to regain his consciousness. 'Huh?! Where am I?'- thought Amit, 'Wait, what's happened to me?!'. All Amit could see was darkness if you can call it seeing at all and he could not even move or worse he had nothing to move. It's like he did not have a body. All he could sense that he was floating in dark void. He was slowly becoming more and more uncertain of his situation.. Amit did not know where he came to. He first thought he was in coma. Maybe somebody saw him and took him to the hospital. And now he was on hospital bed in an unsponsive vegetative state. But he soon had to crush that thought. He somehow knew that he died and was not in a coma. He did not know why he had died or what was the cause of his death. He realised that it was not that all he can see was darkness but It was that he could not even see much less hear, smell, taste or touch anything. 'Is this afterlife? Yes, that is more appropriate and fitting' - he thought. The sheer sensory deprivation and lack of anything made him think. Amit knew that his death would hit his family hard. His mother and brother would be devastated, so will be his relatives. His friends would mourn for him. He knew he could not do anything about it but these thoughts made him wallow in despair. 'Atleast mother has elder brother and their relatives to support her. But what do I do now? Will I just stay here for eternity floating around or is there an escape?' - he thought. Time passed and Amit was slowly coming to terms with his situation. Instead of doing nothing he was reviewing his memories of his life. His decisions, good or bad, how it affected those around him, his life choices, all that he learned in his life, he was reviewing them all. He saw that there were holes, slowly forming in his memories. He wanted to stop it but whatever he did, nothing made it stop. He was forgetting things, subjective things actually, like faces of people, their names, their relation to him and the interactions. He however did not forget his experiences. He retained those memories. It started with the childhood interactions with his family, then it progressed. After an uncountable amount of time at last he forgot his name.

The spirit/soul/entity floated in the dark void unknowingly for a long time devoid of purpose. Suddenly the soul sensed a flickering dot of what it thought was light, but it was far from it. So It wanted to move towards it but could not. The soul wished to escape this dark void of nothingness, and it knew its only chance was to go towards the light, so it willed itself to move closer towards that dot of light. And after trying for some time it moved slowly but surely to its only path of escape. After much time the soul moved much closer to the speck of light. The soul felt it was moving through a tunnel with the light at the end of it. And at last when the soul finally reached the light, the light embraced it.

The soul suddenly started feeling things, Its senses returning. It could feel warmth, It could feel that it was submerged in a viscous liquid, It could feel there was a membrane type thing enveloping It. It did not know what happened to it now but after much deliberation and thinking it suddenly clicked. It now had a body of his own. But how? And soon it made sense. The soul was in Its mother womb. That means sometimes later it would be born. But suddenly the soul became anxious. The soul knew that It was not a very religious person in his past life but It still believed in reincarnation and with reincarnation it brought a plethora of problems. The soul never wanted his reincarnation to be like this. It wanted a natural death of old age. It wanted a fulfilling life. A life It could enjoy living to Its satisfaction. The soul was an avid reader of fan-fictions and web-novels in Its past life, so using that knowledge It theorised that It had some serious concerns. It did not know what world the soul had reincarnating into. It could be a safe, modern world like the previous one where society was progressive and safe for living but it could also be a primitive one where strength rules and society was in name only with dog eat dog mentality. But what could be much worse if the world he came to, turned out to be a fictional one. Now the soul knew that according to multiverse theory fictional worlds were not impossible. Just thinking about living in one of those dangerous, death filled worlds made the soul or more appropriately the fetus curse vehemently at Its poor luck. The fetus knew that It did not meet any god, some random omnipotent being or more importantly the almighty truck-kun or its relatives. It did not even know whether or not it had any golden fingers like those protagonists of those novels. Hell, It did not even if It would be a he or a she or maybe It would born a heshe. The fetus was pretty sure it was born male in Its previous life and identified as a straight male but iI did not knew if It was going to be the same in this life also. After much deliberation It came to a decision that whatever comes It will face it with all of its being and It was going to survive no matter what. And with burning fire of determination the fetus promptly went to sleep.

Life as a fetus was boring and It made no sense just how can a fetus think and maintain such level consciousness with an undeveloped brain. Maybe it was because It had the soul of an adult making Its soul and mind stronger than the norm. It knew that It's birth was approaching. It could make movements now. Not much, just waving it's hands a little or kicking a bit. But It could hear noises coming from outside. Indistinct noises, incoherent speech and laughter. So the fetus thought that instead of just sleeping It might just do something. But what exactly could a fetus do? So using Its limited knowledge It decided to meditate for a start. The fetus learned how to meditate in Its past life so It tried to first calm Itself down then focus on something. It started to focus on the surrounding environment. Slowly It started to feel its surroundings or more accurately sense it. The sense started to slowly spread around in a spherical manner, its center being the fetus itself. The fetus made out a woman who It was certain of was Its mother in this world. It sensed Its mother was lying on a bed rubbing her belly and talking to someone. Spreading out It senses even more the fetus sensed a man sitting at the foot of the bed talking with Its mother in a language that seemed familiar, kind of like Japanese. It knew what Japanese sounded like from Its memories of past life of watching anime. The fetus thought maybe this time It will be born as a Japanese. The man and the woman oozed happiness and the fetus could feel it somehow. It could also sense the surrounding objects, the bed, the table on the left side, a chair, the walls of the room, the floor, ceiling, some things hanging on the wall in an astoundingly accurate detail. It could also make out that the objects and furniture were all wooden and like came from an old age. But soon the fetus became tired and sleepy. The sensing around taking its toll, and soon the fetus fell asleep. In about what seemed like a few months the fetus became aware of Its surroundings once again. It could feel shaking and rumbling, people talking, shouting and screaming of Its mother, the voice of the man who the fetus thought was Its father and a new voice of an old woman shouting encouragement to the mother. The enveloping membrane around the fetus was broken and It could feel that It was about to be born. The fetus used Its limited mobility to shift Its head properly. After all this shit It sure did not want any complications to happen on Its birth. The surrounding pressure was pushing him ahead and the soon to be newborn pushed along with it and popped Its head out of Its mother's womb to the new world. A pair of hands of what It could make of was a female nurse grabbed the newborn and pulled him out amidst the screams of the mother. The nurse examined the newborn, cleaned It, which the newborn was very grateful for. But soon the gratefulness vanished and pure unadulterated rage took its place when the nurse gave a vicious slap to the newborn. The reincarnator cried out, cursing all the generations of the nurse but all came out was cries of a newborn baby.

"How is the baby aunt Miyako?" - the man asked.

"Congratulations, Toru-kun It's a boy! The baby is healthy and good." - answered the nurse.

"Thank kami-sama! Akane, are you alright?."

"I'm okay, just let see my son" - answered the mother.

"Here. He is awake now, Akane-chan. Toru-kun, I will clean this place and pack up. You should let the mother and the child rest now".

"Thank you aunt Miyako for your help. It was all so sudden, without your help we.."

"It's alright Toru-kun, I've known you two since you were children. It's nothing".

"Still, thank you for helping us aunt Miyako".

"Oh, Don't think about it. Now did you two have a name for your child?"

"Yes, we did. He is a boy, so it will be Takeru, Takeru Yamamoto." - answered Akane.

"Takeru, a good name. I hope he will grow up healthy and safe" - Miyako said with a smile and left the house with Toru seeing her out.

At this moment the newly named Takeru was wrapped in bundle of cloth. He was lying in his mother's embrace seeing, hearing and more importantly sensing everything around him. After getting his ass slapped and cursing the nurse to the nine heavens, Takeru thought it would of greater importance to gather information about his new family. Although he could not fully understand the whole conversation, he could understand some words and names. He understood that his name from now is Takeru Yamamoto. His father's name was Toru and his mother's name was Akane. The old nurse's name was Miyako. Surveying his surroundings he surmised that he was in the past or some alternate world. He was somewhere in Japan sometime in the 14th or 15th century. From the state of his new parents clothes he assumed that his new family were common people, probably farmers or workers. From his already spread senses which seemed to have increased he found out that the new house he would be spending his upcoming days in was a simple one storey house with 4 rooms. One room which they were currently at, one drawing room, a store room of sorts and a storefront. Akane saw her son looking around inquisitively and smiled. Her son brought joy in her and Toru's life and she cuddled and embraced her son. She was lovingly looking at him and engraving this piece of memory in her mind for all her life. Takeru suddenly saw his mother's face up close and looked at her. Akane was in her mid-twenties with milky complexion, black hair, black eyes, oval shaped face with certain eastern beauty in it. Toru entered ther room after seeing aunt Miyako out. Takeru saw his new father for the first time. Toru was a tall brawny man in his thirties with tanned complexion, black hair, chiseled jaw, a little beard and sharp brown eyes. As he was looking at his new parents, Toru and Akane was also looking at Takeru. To them Takeru was a healthy baby with tufts of black hair on his head, brown eyes, an oval shaped face looking at them. Akane said, "Toru, look at little Takeru, he is looking at you". Toru took Takeru in his arms, looking at his newborn son. "You will become a great man someday my son Takeru". He kissed Takeru's forehead and carefully gave him back to his mother. Toru lovingly eyeing his son and his wife said, " Akane, I will go prepare the food. You take care of little Takeru". Akane smiled at him prepared to breastfeed Takeru. Takeru was stunned seeing his new mother sliding her yukata a little taking out her boob. Now Takeru knew that as a baby he needs to feed on breast milk as in this time period there were no other baby food but still as a self-respecting fully grown-ass adult from 21st century he was leery at the idea of sucking his mother's breast. Still hunger overcame the shame and Takeru took the breast in his mouth sucking milk silently, drifting of to sleep. Akane saw her son, the cute little bundle of happiness slowly falling asleep. She too drifted asleep slowly caressing her son.

The next time Takeru woke up in his new mother's embrace, he slowly came to the realisation that yesterday was not a dream. He truly reincarnated in the past. This hit him hard. He was going with the flow yesterday but now it was bothering him heavily. He thought of his past life, his mother, brother, friends, his aspirations, his dreams, his job, his life. He could not remember his mother face, her voice or even his brother's for that matter but he knew he had them. He could still feel their love, care, concern, worry for him. Maybe the memories were gone but he knew that they did exist. It saddened him greatly to know that he could never go back. He never wanted to reincarnate at the cost of his life. He did not know how he came to be here. He never wanted to be here. But after thinking a bit he came to a conclusion that he can never go back, so why fret over it so much. He, who gained a new life, a new start, can make it great in this new life. He was given a chance, a second chance, many would literally give their life up to get. So since he got it however unwilling he was to get it, he might as well make the best out of it. He knew that maybe he would always see his new parents as 'new' parents. But maybe he could love them as much they loved him. As Takeru could somehow sense emotions he knew that Toru and Akane truly loved him from the bottom of their hearts. He sensed it. As he looked at his new mother sleeping beside him, his mother Akane also woke up and saw Takeru looking at her. She smiled, caressing his cheek. Seeing her smile, Takeru also smiled sensing her love. 'Maybe reincarnation is not all that bad as I thought' - thought Takeru Yamamoto.