Before the truck, my life wasn't a tragedy. It was just... a waste of resources.
I'd spent three years in the same Tokyo apartment—too small, too expensive, in a neighborhood that wasn't *quite* cool enough to justify the rent but was perfectly placed to drain my salary. Three years at the same job, explaining the same five software functions to people who seemed actively resistant to learning them.
Three years with Mika.
Our relationship was a matter of logistics. We'd moved in together to split the rent. We stayed together because breaking up seemed like a lot of paperwork. It was a cohabitation agreement that we sometimes forgot was supposed to be romantic.
I was fine with this. People called it "being cold."
"You don't *feel* anything, Haru," Mika said once, after I'd created a spreadsheet to optimize our grocery spending.
I *did* feel things. I just didn't see the point of... performing them. Why broadcast? It's a waste of energy.
That morning—Truck Day—was a standard Tuesday. Woke at 6:47 AM (the alarm was 6:45; I had a two-snooze-button buffer built in). Reused yesterday's coffee grounds. Put on the Tuesday shirt (navy blue, faded, zero decision fatigue).
Mika was asleep. She worked evenings. I went to work.
The office was the office. My cubicle was my cubicle—third floor, fourth from the left, view of a billboard I'd never bothered to read.
Kenji was already there. He worked in sales, but he'd been... *around* a lot. Riding the same train home as Mika. Making coffee in our kitchen like he knew where the mugs were. I'd filed these data points under "Kenji is friendly" and hadn't processed them further.
He showed up at my desk at 3:15 PM.
"Hey," he said. He sounded apologetic. "We need to talk to you."
*We*.
Mika was standing right behind him, looking like she'd rehearsed this.
"I've been sleeping with Kenji," she said, fast, as if speed made it more efficient. "For four months. I'm sorry it's at work, but I couldn't—"
"You're boring," Kenji cut in. Just stated it. "And Mika's not happy. So, we're ending this. She's moving out this weekend."
I processed this.
"That's poor logistics," I said. "Four months? The communication overhead must have been a nightmare. And this weekend? For a move? That's not enough lead time. You should have had a better plan."
Mika looked baffled. "That's... all you have to say? You're not upset?"
*Upset*? No. It was... like finding a critical bug in code I thought was stable. A four-month-long bug. I felt... audited. And tired.
"I'm going for a walk," I said. "This conversation is unproductive."
I walked past the usual landmarks. The ramen shop (lunch, twice a week, shoyu tonkotsu, no variation). The convenience store. The crosswalk.
I was thinking about the sheer *waste*. Four months of a relationship that was, functionally, a lie. All that time spent maintaining a system that was already corrupted. All that time *existing* in a life that had no real texture.
I wasn't paying attention to the light.
The truck hit me at 3:47 PM. It was a clean impact. A sudden, definitive cessation of forward momentum.
In its own way, it was a very tidy solution.
Then, white.
Part Two: The Negotiation (My Perspective)
"You're awake! Finally!"
I was dead. That much was clear. The void I was in was absolute, and information just... *arrived* in my head. No eyes, no ears. Efficient. I approved.
The being in front of me—or, the being I was "perceiving"—called herself Lady Ætheria. Goddess of, she claimed, "bad decisions" and "entertaining consequences."
She offered me a deal.
I tried to refuse. I'd had enough of... existing. It was a poor use of time. Death seemed like a clean database wipe. I'd like that, please.
She found this hilarious. "You're so *boring*! I love it!"
She countered with a fantasy world, god-tier reality-editing powers, and a quiet life. No quests, no destiny.
The "quiet life" part was acceptable.
"I want a contractual guarantee of adequate ramen," I said.
"Done!"
"And a formal, binding opt-out for all 'hero' or 'destiny' scenarios."
"Done!" Valthor, a second being who looked like cosmic bureaucracy given form, materialized and made a note on a clipboard that seemed to hum with terrible importance. "He'll also want to reject heroic *titles*."
"Yes," I confirmed. "I don't want to be called a hero. Ever."
"Got it."
Then Ætheria mentioned the glitch.
This... was a problem. A major design flaw.
"See," she chirped, "your power activates when you're annoyed. Or bored. Or too comfortable! So your entire quest for peace becomes this beautiful train wreck where you keep breaking reality *by trying to relax*!"
"No."
"Oh, yes!"
"That is a system designed specifically to fail. It contradicts the 'quiet life' premise."
"I know! Isn't it *perfect*?"
Valthor just sighed. "The paperwork's already filed, kid. She's been planning this."
They even roped in *another* entity named Sylvara, whose sole contribution was to add "glitter effects" to my major power displays.
Glitter.
A formal complaint was lodged. It was, I noted, immediately ignored. Protest was a waste of resources.
"Fine," I said. "When?"
Part Three: The Reincarnation
The void collapsed.
My memories were being archived. Shoyu tonkotsu. My mother's face. Mika saying *boring*. It all turned to static.
I was being compressed into seventeen years of someone else's life.
*This is going to be a disaster,* I thought.
From the void, I swear I heard laughing.
Part Four: The First Inefficiency
I woke up as a baby.
This was, I registered immediately, a catastrophic failure of logistics.
My mind was intact. My body was... a lump. Useless. I was trapped in a tiny, screaming meat-suit that couldn't even support its own head or control its own bladder.
A woman with kind eyes was cooing at me.
"Oh, look at him," she said to a man with a deep voice. "He has such a serious expression. Do you think babies can think serious thoughts?"
*Yes,* I wanted to communicate. *I am having extremely serious thoughts about the profound design flaws of infancy and the existential frustration of being unable to file a formal complaint.*
What came out was: "Gah."
"I think he's hungry," she said.
I wasn't hungry. I was irritated. But I allowed the process to continue.
This went on for weeks. My new parents were Lyra and Torvin. She was, I gathered from bassinet-level eavesdropping, a retired S-Rank adventurer. He was a blacksmith. They were good people. They were also, unfortunately, the parents of a baby (me) who had simply "appeared" in their house one day, courtesy of Valthor's cosmic paperwork.
The village... had a ramen shop. I filed that away. *Contractual obligation: fulfilled.*
"He's such a quiet baby," Lyra noted, when I was about two months old. "He just... observes."
Crying was a pointless expenditure of energy. It communicated "discomfort" but offered no specific data. I refused to do it unless absolutely necessary.
My primary state was one of low-level, simmering frustration.
At three months old, this frustration found an outlet.
Part Five: The First Glitch
Master Thistle was the village baker. And he was, objectively, a terrible singer.
He'd visit Lyra to sell bread, and he would sing. He wasn't just off-key. He was exploring new, undiscovered notes that had no business existing. His voice cracked. He whistled when he hit an 'S.'
I was trapped in my bassinet, forced to listen. This was not just inefficient; it was an active drain on my sanity.
I felt... annoyed. Genuinely, deeply annoyed. A small, hot spark of it in my infant chest.
Master Thistle was kneading dough. And as my annoyance peaked, the dough... *inflated*.
It didn't just rise; it ballooned to three times its normal size, quivered violently, and then...
*Pop.*
A cloud of flour. A true "flour-based chaos" event.
Master Thistle stood there, covered head-to-toe in white powder, looking utterly baffled. "The yeast!" he sputtered. "It must have been bad!"
It wasn't the yeast.
It was me. My annoyance at his singing had *edited reality* to make the dough explode.
Ætheria's glitch was working perfectly.
Part Six: Understanding the Problem
Over the next two years, the glitches piled up.
A book Lyra was looking for didn't just fall off the shelf; it floated gently into her hand when my boredom at watching her search reached critical mass.
A wasp that wouldn't leave me alone didn't just fly away; it was suddenly, inexplicably encased in a perfect, tiny sphere of ice. In the middle of summer.
Chalk at the village schoolhouse shattered in precise, geometric patterns when the teacher's lesson became too repetitive.
I was the common denominator. My emotional state—my boredom, my annoyance, my frustration—was a trigger for reality-warping chaos.
By my second birthday (my fifth, if you're counting), I understood the parameters of my new existence.
I am a being with god-level power, trapped in a toddler's body I can barely control, with a power I can't suppress, in a situation I never agreed to. And the entire system is designed to make me fail at my one goal: *just being left alone.*
Thanks, Ætheria.
*I'm definitely not holding a grudge,* I thought, as Lyra wiped dough off my face after another of Master Thistle's "baking accidents."
(I was absolutely holding a grudge. But at age two, my options for revenge were... limited. For now.)