I remember the last sound I heard before passing out was beeping and humming of medical equipment that surrounded me. Now though? No sound at all. Which was weird because I know my condition required me to be at least be close to some sort of medical machinery, if not outright tethered to it one way or another.
Another thing I noticed was that I felt light. No pain, no ache, no soreness, nothing that felt wrong. A feeling I don't know I'd remember after all those years always had something wrong within my body. To be patched time and time again with those chemicals they called medicine only to realize that it doesn't quite work.
I really wanted to hope, that this feeling of nothing wrong, was the sort of miracle that I and everyone who care about me have been waiting for. But I'm also afraid of the feeling of disappointment that has constantly haunted me for the past decade and a half. So many disappointments of many failed hopes made me scared to even start hoping now.
Suddenly, drowsiness of the highest order hit me. Yet it followed immediately by a strange feeling, no less sudden and significant, that I know somehow was urging me to wake up, fast.
"*gasp*"
I finally jolted awake and immediately sat up as I can feel the strange feeling from earlier disappearing. As I gained my wits seconds later, I noticed again that my body felt unusually light. Which was a reason to be happy, if not for the fact that I am not anywhere I know. Definitely not where I supposed to be.
'This is not my hospital room. In fact, this room doesn't look like a hospital room at all. Where am I? And what happened?'
My thoughts racing, my nerve tensing, and I can feel my heart thumping. I kept my mouth shut and switched to breathing from my nose as I was too scared to make a noise. I can only look around, assessing the situation and try to make sense of what has happened.
What I first noted was how dark the room was. Weirdly enough, the darkness was kind of comforting in a way, yet it doesn't help my nerves of being not where I supposed to be. Next thing that caught my attention was a clock in the room.
'The clock showed 12, but with no sun means it should be midnight.'
I kept looking around until my mind stalled by what I saw at the distance outside the windows. It was something that was so familiar yet impossible to exists as it comes from a certain very popular ninja story. There, in the distance, was the hokage rock.
Still flabbergasted, I was instinctively peeled my gaze away from the windows and toward my own hands. It was small, and it's obvious that it is not my own hand. Not only because how small it was, but because of healthy it looked.
As realization about what could be happening dawned on my mind, another wave of drowsiness hit me. This time, I immediately found myself floating in some sort of void. But instead of emptiness, I can "see" enormous number of pictures floating around.
'I see, I died, huh? So I lost that battle in the end.'
Did I sound so casual at mentioning my own mortality? Well, yeah. It's going to happen sooner rather than later anyway. I was already at the point that further medication was futile and doing so were simply a formality. Scientifically, my death was a matter of when, not if.
How do I know I died? I realized it after I saw the hokage rock and that small hands that I was somehow reincarnated. -Or was it a transmigration?-
Anyways. As far as I know, you have to die first in order for something like that to happen. Then what about the possibility that that was a dream? Well, I believe I know very well the feeling of being awake. Especially the feeling of heart thumping so hard as my nerve tensed was as real as it gets.
Now, I was quite familiar with fictional stories surrounding reincarnation, transmigration, regression, and other similar settings. After all, reading was one of only few pastimes available and viable to me while I was doing all those therapies. It just so happens that stories around those topics were all the rage at the time.
While imagining oneself as the MC from those kinds of stories might be exhilarating, finding yourself in that situation was far more complicated. For one it is quite difficult to first accept that you're either leaving your old life behind or that you have another life to go through. I myself currently were struggling with both but even more with the latter.
Even with a life full of ailments that I knew was going to end sooner rather than later, it is still hard to accept that I can no longer see the ones that I loved. Especially now with the fact that I'm not actually dead in the end.
On the other hand, living more than half my life being in constant pain, ache, and discomfort had made me weary. Don't get me wrong - I'm not suicidal at all, but I kind of expecting a proper rest at the end of the battle.
And if I'm not mistaken, I am now in the world of Naruto, the world of ninja, with the hokage rock that only had four faces. Not really the kind of world and time where one would want for retiring and take it easy if you know what would happen.
The second thing you have to deal with was the guilt. Especially if you're transmigrated rather than reincarnated. Though one might not have to deal with it depending on their morality.
I'm not at all an expert regarding the cycle of life and death as what I know came mostly from fictional stories. But from what I do know, I can conclude that I am transmigrated rather than reincarnated. I am not reborn anew, but rather took over someone's body.
Most stories with reincarnated MC started as a baby after all. Some even started from the womb. While I saw that this body's hands were smaller than what I had last time, I'm pretty sure it's not as small as a baby should be.
That's where the morals come into play. Now, I'm not really a good person nor have I ever claimed as one. But I have never done anything that's against the law, the rules, ethics, or even local custom. I'm a good boy, so to say.
Although it is quite often that an envious thought reared its ugly head on my mind whenever I saw "normal" people go about their day. Countless time I had wished to be like them, but I would never want to take over their life. Neither in soap opera style nor taking-over-body style.
Suffice to say I feel incredibly guilty right now, and it is suffocating. I'm perfectly in understanding that I had no control whatsoever in this phenomenon, but doesn't that still mean I technically killed whoever I was transmigrated into?
'Have I just robbed a child of their life? Doesn't that also mean I am robbing a parent of their child? Robbing a mother of her love, robbing a father of his pride? Robbing a family of their happiness?'
Just as the guilt starts to drown me, the pictures that has quietly floating around me starts to shine brightly, like they were demanding an overdue attention. After that, my mind was somehow forced to focus on them. Then suddenly, I found myself experiencing something akin to a movie, which I believed was the memories of the child whose body I took over.