Chapter 1

Chapter 1

According to the Buddhist world view, people are reborn when they die. However, they arent necessarily reborn as human, and it isnt necessarily only humans who are reborn. A man could be reborn as a cow, a dog could be reborn as a woman, and a demon could be reborn as a hermit.

This theory is, perhaps, how I died by hitting my head while falling down the stairs in 21st century Japan and got reincarnated into a mountain. No, I wasnt a man as big as a mountain or something like that. I literally became a mountain.

The land surrounding me was barren, with no grass growing as far as the eye can see. There were no signs of living things, and there were no other mountains than mine. There also werent any rivers, nor were there any birds flying in the sky. The world was cold, with thick clouds covering the sky so that barely a patch of blue could be seen. Occasionally, dust was blown around by the wind.

I was confused at first. I didnt understand what was happening.

Why did I become a mountain?Updated from novelb(i)n.c(o)m

How was I seeing without any eyes?

How was I thinking without a brain?

I wanted to cry, but no tears came out. I had no voice at all.

However, I was able to sleep, so I closed my eyes and slept while praying that someone would do something about this.

As time passed by without anything happening, I began to be able to accept my current state of being. I had become a mountain. Therefore, from now on I had no choice but to live as a mountain. I had no idea why or how this happened, but I simply had to accept this as fact and move on.

There were some things I found out while I was sleeping. First of all, I didnt seem to get hungry. Apparently, I received nourishment by absorbing heat from a lava pool thats under the mountain. And, even though I wasnt doing anything, occasionally lava spilled out of the mountain and became hardened rock once it cools. Like this, my body (the mountain) gradually grew in size. It was weird. Do normal mountains also grow using such a method? If I remember correctly, dont they form from changes in the earths crust? I didnt really get it, but in any case, the lava was nourishing, so I got used to it.

At the price of endurance, the landscape of the earth had changed from the cold wilderness of just a day ago. There was nothing but red as far as the eye could see! Once the dust settled, I could see that the earth had become a sea of magma. It was what remained after the high-temperature evaporation earlier. Even the air was burning; the burning lava had scattered into the air and even into space, causing it to be unclear where the sky starts and the ground begins.

Small meteorites fell constantly like rain, and stirred the ground. My mountainous surface was struck by them numerous times, and one time I come close to death as one nearly split me right in two. I suffered through countless magma tsunamis; no sooner did one tsunami fade away then another, usually bigger one would strike.

It felt like I saw nothing but red for years, perhaps even decades. For all I know, it may have even continued on for hundreds of years. It seemed like I lost the ability to see any other color except red. It was a terrible time that could not be tolerated by the human spirit. But since I was now I mountain, I was fine (?).

Eventually, there was a break in the unchanging red world. Black came into view between the red. It took me years to realize that it was the night sky. Then, a ridiculous amount of years later, the sky was finally black part of the time and red part of the time, which I took to be the distinction between night and day.

Once the meteorites stopped falling, the Earth really resembled Saturn. That is to say, and asteroid belt had developed around it. The lava that had been blown into outer space was gathered by the gravity of the earth. The ring, which should be called a collection of small meteorites, became smaller year by year. Some fell to Earth, others collided and coalesced and become larger chunks. Apparently, the ring of meteorites was coming together to form a small object. It was much smaller than the Earth, but it was made out of a similar substance.

The small red-hot object, which had not yet even cooled, was gradually increasing in size by sucking in the ring of small meteorites with its gravity as it orbited around the Earth.

If this continues, wont it stabilize and orbit around the Earth like a satellite?

Then, I had a realization.

Its the moon, isnt it? Now that I think about it, I have seen stars shining in the sky between thick clouds, but I have never seen the moon. I cant think of anything else it could be except the moon.

Huh?

But that means

This is Earth before the birth of the moon?

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!!??