Taisho Shinkon was an ordinary man chasing an extraordinary dream.
At thirty-two, he lived alone in a modest Tokyo apartment, surrounded by stacks of research papers, coffee-stained mugs, and a half-dead bonsai tree on the windowsill — the only bit of green in his sterile life.
He was a biologist, working under the Environmental Research Division of a mid-sized Japanese university. His specialty wasn't flashy — plant biology and regeneration — but he loved it. There was something deeply peaceful about watching life grow from a seed, no matter how small.
To most people, his research seemed dull. But for Taisho, understanding life at its simplest level — a cell dividing, a leaf sprouting, a root spreading underground — was like reading poetry written by nature itself.
He'd never been a prodigy. His papers were often rejected, and funding was always tight. Yet he kept going, fueled not by fame or ambition, but by quiet curiosity.
He believed that if humanity could learn from how nature sustained itself — perhaps people could too.
That night was like any other. The rain was light, tapping against the lab windows. His colleagues had left hours ago, leaving the corridor eerily quiet.
He stayed behind, hunched over a set of culture dishes. Inside them, plant cells were reacting to a new growth formula he'd designed. If it worked, he might finally have proof that he could accelerate regeneration without using genetic modification.
A small victory, but a meaningful one.
The readings began to spike unexpectedly.Taisho frowned, adjusting the nutrient feed. "Strange…" he murmured, noting the data. "It shouldn't react this fast."
The cells were growing — multiplying exponentially — and glowing faintly green under the microscope light. He leaned closer, mesmerized.
Then came the sound — a pop, followed by a sharp hiss.A small gas line had ruptured under the table, mixing with an electrical short.
He didn't even have time to scream.A sudden flash — white, soundless — swallowed everything.
When consciousness returned, there was no pain.Only warmth.
And silence.
He tried to move, but nothing obeyed. No arms, no legs, no voice. Only… sensations.He felt the texture of earth, the pull of moisture, the warmth of sunlight seeping through.
"Where… am I?"
Something was wrong.
Shinkon tried to move his fingers — nothing happened. He tried to blink, to breathe — still nothing. Yet, somehow, he could sense everything around him.
He could feel pressure in every direction — dense, heavy, moist. The sensation wasn't like skin, but more… distributed, as if his whole body was buried in soil.
He noticed something else: a faint movement inside him, like liquid being drawn upward through thin tubes. There was no heartbeat, no lungs — but some kind of continuous internal flow.
"What… is this circulation?" he thought.
He focused, instinctively analyzing. The movement wasn't pulsating like blood — it was steady, slow, driven by tension rather than muscle. The pattern was familiar. It resembled xylem flow — the transport of water in plants, where molecules climb upward through cohesion and capillary action.
Then another signal.Warmth — not felt on skin, but absorbed throughout his structure. Energy gathered in certain tissues near the surface, converting light into something usable.
"Light absorption… photosynthetic reaction?"
He remembered his old research — chloroplast reactions, photon capture, ATP conversion. The thought was absurd, yet every sense confirmed it. He was processing sunlight.
And underground, he could sense countless branching structures spreading out — adjusting direction when they found pockets of moisture or mineral-rich soil. Each signal was faint but organized, like a living network responding to its environment.
Roots.
His mind froze.
He didn't have arms. He didn't have eyes. But he could feel leaves, branches, roots — all connected, alive, and his.
He tried to move again, and only a ripple passed through his structure — a faint creak of wood and a shiver of leaves.
"No…" His thoughts trembled. "This can't be real…"
He is reborn as tree.
Time passed — he wasn't sure how much.
He couldn't see or sleep, but he could sense things around him. Sunlight warmed his upper branches, rain soaked into the ground and flowed through his roots. Over time, he learned how to move water where it was needed, how to grow thicker bark, how to survive.
The forest around him was full of activity. He could feel insects crawling on his surface, small animals brushing past, and the soft vibrations of footsteps in the soil. It was a living, breathing place — wild and untouched.
Still, he didn't understand what had happened.The last thing he remembered was the lab, the explosion, and then… this.
"Did I really… get reborn as a tree?"
The thought sounded insane, but the sensations around him were too real to deny.Maybe this was some remote forest, far from people. Maybe he was just meant to exist like this now — as part of nature.
For now, there was nothing he could do but wait, grow, and try to understand this strange new life.
Just then a sound is heard in his mind : "Ding!!"