Narrator:
The digital clock on the microwave blinked 11:47 PM, casting a faint, green glow across the cluttered, bachelor-pad kitchen of Yamano Keisuke. It was a Tuesday night in late October, in a small, rented apartment in downtown Shinjuku, Tokyo. Rain slicked the windows, blurring the neon lights of the street below into impressionistic streaks of red and blue.
Keisuke, twenty-five, Japanese-American, and deeply invested in the art of the solitary late-night snack, stood before the open refrigerator. His state of mind was one of focused anticipation. He had just finished a grueling 12-hour shift in data entry and had earned this moment of culinary reward: an authentic homemade sushi roll.
He reached into the fridge and pulled out a large, two-pound glass jar of pickled ginger—the gari—imported and expensive.
"Okay, deep breaths," he thought, his stomach rumbling in agreement. "Just a little bit of the pink stuff for flavor. It cleanses the palate, right?"
He assembled his California roll, placing a modest, normal amount of ginger on the side of his plate. He took a bite. It was good. Sharp, sweet, a perfect counterpoint to the avocado and imitation crab.
"Man, that zing is something else. Maybe a little more couldn't hurt? Just a pinch."
A pinch turned into a spoonful. A spoonful turned into eating it directly from the jar. A peculiar, addictive burn spread across his tongue. The rest of the world faded away. The rain outside, the sterile kitchen, the concept of moderation—all irrelevant. The sheer, vinegary intensity was a distraction he craved after a day of spreadsheets.
"This is fine. I'm building up my tolerance. It's just spicy, slightly acidic vegetable matter. A superfood, probably," he rationalized internally, scooping out another large handful and stuffing it into his mouth.
He chewed, the flavor an overwhelming, ecstatic assault on his senses. He kept going, methodically emptying the jar until it was nearly gone. A strange heat began to bloom in his abdomen, a dull ache that quickly sharpened.
"Okay… maybe that was too much. It feels like a small badger is trying to gnaw its way out of my stomach lining."
He placed the almost-empty jar down on the counter with a shaky hand. The dull ache escalated into intense, white-hot, burning agony. He gasped, dropping to his knees. The world tilted. The green glow of the microwave clock blurred into an abstract smear of light.
"Well," he thought, the sharp, pungent taste of ginger his last sensation, "this is a remarkably stupid way to die."
The darkness swallowed him whole. There was no bright light, no review of his life, no divine intervention. Just an indifferent, profound silence.
He woke with a gasp, his eyes snapping open. He was lying on his back on a surprisingly soft surface. The smell of ginger was gone, replaced by a clean, almost sterile scent. Above him was a ceiling he didn't recognize – smooth, white, with a single fluorescent light panel humming softly. He wasn't in his apartment kitchen anymore. Soon the light at the end of the tunnel was visible until he was somewhere warm soft and strangely watery?
"Okay, this is getting weirder. I'm definitely dreaming," he thought, trying to pinch himself, a futile gesture against the surreal atmosphere.
"Not a dream. Not a hospital. What the hell is going on?" he panicked internally, stumbling backward, reaching a door a exit anything which now felt soft and unstable .
Keisuke's consciousness, a raw, formless energy, was immediately drawn downward, a violent, accidental current in the metaphysical stream. He was a passenger in an uncontrolled transmigration, purely by chance, no goddess charting the course.
The sensation of being compressed and pulled was agonizingly physical, a sickening reversal of the peaceful void.
Then, the abrupt, cold shock of the new world.
The void was gone, replaced instantly by sound, temperature, and visceral sensation. He was compressed, struggling for air, propelled forward into a world that smelled of musk, stale linen, and expensive perfume.
He was a baby again. The transition was complete. The raw, intelligent mind of Yamano Keisuke was trapped inside the frail body of a newborn infant.
The rough hands gripped his tiny, wet form. The air was frigid against his slick skin. The voices—speaking that language he shouldn't understand but somehow did—filtered through the shocking reality of his new existence:
"A boy, My Lady," the woman announced.
"Let me see him."
The previous world, the hospital vision, the apartment in Shinjuku —all gone. Only the cold, cruel reality of a new life-and the faint, lingering taste of ginger he could no longer explain."