Death was not the end.
That truth revealed itself slowly, reluctantly—like a wound reopening after you were certain it had already scarred over.
If this were mercy, it was a cruel kind.
If it were punishment, it was strangely gentle.
I would later learn that rebirth is not a miracle.
It is a continuation.
And continuations carry everything you failed to bury.
⟡
Darkness withdrew the way a tide does—slow, resistant, leaving behind the ache of exposure.
Light followed.
Not gentle light. Not the forgiving glow of morning or the soft warmth of dawn. This light was invasive—sharp enough to hurt, prying through my closed eyelids as if they were no barrier at all.
I tried to turn away.
My body did not respond.
Panic stirred—not fully formed, not yet allowed to exist. I reached for breath and found it shallow, fractured, stolen in pieces rather than drawn by will.
Why can't I move?
Sound came next. Not words—never words at first—but tones. Murmurs layered over one another, rising and falling in unfamiliar rhythms. A language brushed against my hearing and slipped away again, leaving only unease behind.
This wasn't right.
I had been in rooms like this before. White ceilings. Sterile air. The dull chorus of machines pretending to care whether you lived or died.
Hospitals smelled a certain way.
This place did not.
The air was warm. Thick with woodsmoke and something bitter—herbal, burned low and slow. Old things. Living things. Not antiseptic, but intent.
My skin prickled.
Something heavy rested over me. A blanket, maybe—too thick, too close. I tried to lift my arms, to push it away, and felt nothing answer the command.
Not numbness.
Not pain.
A disconnect.
As if the instructions were being issued from somewhere too far away to matter.
Why do I feel… smaller?
A shadow shifted above me.
I couldn't focus on it—only the sense of mass, of attention bending toward me. Someone leaned closer. I felt it before I saw it: the subtle change in air, the gravity of being observed.
Then—a hand.
Large. Roughened. Calloused in a way that spoke of work rather than cruelty. It brushed my cheek with impossible care.
My body recoiled.
Not visibly. Not physically.
But inside, everything screamed.
Hands meant pain.
Hands meant being held still while something worse followed.
Hands meant Tobashi.
My chest hitched. I tried to scream.
What escaped instead was a thin, broken sound—wet, helpless, stripped of meaning before it reached the air.
The hand froze.
Then—
Darkness rushed back in.
⟡
This darkness was different.
There was no pain waiting for me here. No echo of bruises. No phantom ache along my ribs. No concrete biting into my skin.
The weight of my body was gone entirely.
I wasn't floating.
I wasn't falling.
I wasn't anything.
Just awareness, suspended.
Silence stretched—complete, absolute.
Until it broke.
"Welcome, Takuya."
The voice came from nowhere—and everywhere. It threaded through the void like something that had always existed, merely choosing to acknowledge me now.
My breath caught.
"You shouldn't be afraid," it continued calmly. "You've heard me before."
I wanted to deny that. To demand answers.
What came out instead was fragile, stripped of defiance.
"…How do you know my name?"
A pause. Not hesitation—patience.
"You died knowing it," the voice replied.
The word died landed softly.
That made it worse.
I laughed—a brittle sound, sharp enough to hurt. "Right. So this is it? Some kind of joke?"
No answer.
Anger rose, because fear always gave way to it eventually. "Did Tobashi put you up to this? Is this part of it? Hitting me after I'm already dead?"
Silence stretched.
Then, quietly:
"He died as well."
The void seemed to contract.
Tobashi.
Dead.
The name felt wrong without its weight. No threat. No certainty of tomorrow. Just a word, emptied of power.
"Then why am I here?" I asked.
"Because you chose to be."
Fragments surfaced—white light, reaching hands, a question asked at the edge of everything. I hadn't answered with words.
I'd answered with exhaustion.
"I didn't choose anything," I said. "I just wanted it to stop."
"That was enough."
I clenched what would have been my fists. "So what is this? Heaven? Hell?"
"Neither," the voice replied. "This is a threshold. And beyond it—another beginning."
"No," I said immediately. "I don't want another one."
A pause.
"Why?"
Because I already failed at the first.
Because I learned how to endure, not how to live.
Because starting over doesn't erase what was done to you—it just makes you carry it longer.
"I won't forget," I said. "If you think I'll wake up clean—like none of it mattered—you're wrong."
The darkness warmed.
"I would never ask you to forget," the voice said. "Pain shapes what survives."
Light gathered ahead—soft at first, then swelling. Radiant without cruelty. Alive. Patient.
"Then this isn't mercy," I said.
"No," the voice agreed. "It is opportunity."
⟡
Light exploded.
Sound tore through me—raw, overwhelming, real. Air filled my lungs violently, dragging a scream out with it before I could stop myself.
I cried.
Not quietly. Not politely.
I screamed with everything I had, my entire body convulsing as survival clawed its way back into being. The sound wasn't language.
It was existence.
Warm hands steadied me.
Different hands.
Gentle. Certain. They didn't restrain. They didn't hurt. A woman leaned over me, her voice flowing in a language I didn't understand—but I felt it all the same.
Comfort without demand.
Presence without threat.
Her hand brushed my cheek again.
I didn't flinch.
That was when it broke me.
Because safety felt foreign.
Because warmth felt suspicious.
Because some part of me was always waiting—for the moment it would turn.
I screamed until my throat burned. Until my chest ached. Until there was nothing left but shaking breaths and the unbearable weight of being alive again.
I was small.
Smaller than I had ever been.
But somewhere behind unfocused eyes—behind a helpless body that knew nothing of words or names or violence yet—
I remembered everything.
And that was the cruelest part.
Because I had survived once by learning how to endure pain.
Now, given a second life—
I had to learn how to exist without it.
And I didn't know how.