Kazuki's POV
The kid appeared out of nowhere.
One second I was checking my phone, mentally counting how many hours until I could escape my boss's endless meeting about "synergy optimization"—whatever that meant. The next second, a little boy in a red jacket darted into the street, chasing a soccer ball that bounced into traffic.
I didn't think. My body just moved.
My briefcase hit the sidewalk. My coffee splashed across the pavement. I lunged forward, grabbed the kid's shoulders, and shoved him backward with everything I had.
The truck's horn screamed.
I had just enough time to think: This is the dumbest way to die.
Then the world exploded into pain and darkness.
I woke up drowning.
Not in water—in nothing. Complete, suffocating blackness pressed against me from every direction. I couldn't see. Couldn't move. My arms and legs felt twisted into impossible positions, cramped into a space too small for my body.
Am I buried alive?
Panic shot through me like lightning. I tried to scream, but my mouth wouldn't open. I tried to thrash, but my muscles refused to cooperate. It was like being trapped inside concrete that was slowly crushing me.
My heart hammered so hard I thought it would burst. The darkness squeezed tighter. Tighter. I can't breathe I can't breathe I can't—
Wait.
I stopped struggling. Focused on my chest.
I was breathing. Somehow. The air felt thick and weird, but it was there.
Okay, Kazuki. Think. What's the last thing you remember?
The truck. The kid. The impact.
I died.
The certainty hit me like a second truck. I'd definitely died. You don't get hit by a speeding vehicle and walk away. Which meant either this was some weird afterlife, or...
Or what? Reincarnation? Like in those manga I used to read on the train?
I would've laughed if I could move my face. Me, Kazuki Tanaka, boring software engineer who spent his weekends debugging code and binge-watching anime, getting isekai'd into another world? That stuff didn't actually happen.
But here I was. Wherever "here" was.
The cramped space around me suddenly felt different. Not like a coffin or a cave. It was smooth. Curved. And now that I was calming down, I realized something else—it was warm. Really warm. Like being wrapped in a heated blanket.
Am I... inside something?
I tried moving again, more carefully this time. My—hand? Paw? Whatever I had—pressed against the smooth wall. It gave slightly, like hard rubber.
A terrible thought crept into my mind.
No way. I can't be...
I pushed harder. The wall resisted, then suddenly—
CRACK.
A hairline of light appeared above me, so bright after the darkness that it felt like looking at the sun. I squinted—or tried to. My eyes felt wrong. Everything felt wrong.
CRACK. CRACK.
More light flooded in. My body moved on instinct, pushing and scratching at the shell around me. Because that's what it was. A shell.
I'm in an egg.
I'm. In. An. EGG.
The shell gave way with a final wet crunch, and I spilled out into blinding brightness and freezing air. I gasped—except it came out as a pathetic squeaking sound.
"Oh!"
A girl's voice. Young. Shocked.
I tried to blink the light-blindness away, my vision slowly adjusting. Shapes formed. Colors. A wooden floor beneath me. Stone walls. And looming over me—
A face.
A girl maybe seventeen or eighteen, with long dark hair and eyes so red they looked like rubies. Pretty, in a sad sort of way, with tears streaming down her cheeks. She was kneeling on the floor, staring at me like I was both the best and worst thing she'd ever seen.
"You're alive," she whispered. Her hands trembled as she reached toward me. "Thank the spirits, you're actually alive."
I tried to talk. Tried to say something like "Where am I?" or "What's happening?" or even just "Help!"
What came out was: "Mew."
I froze.
The girl's expression crumbled into something between relief and devastation. "Oh. Oh no. You're just a common cub. Not even a magical breed." Fresh tears rolled down her face. "They were right. I really am worthless."
Wait, what? Who's worthless?
I looked down at myself and my brain short-circuited.
Paws. I had paws. Four of them. Covered in white fur. My body was tiny, round, and decidedly not human.
I'm a cat. I died and became a cat.
No—not a cat. Through the girl's tears, I caught my reflection in a bucket of water nearby. Round ears. White fur with faint stripes. Clumsy, oversized paws.
A tiger. A baby tiger.
This is insane. This is completely insane.
The girl scooped me up in shaking hands. I was so small I fit in her palms. She held me close to her chest, and I felt her heart pounding as fast as mine.
"I'm sorry," she whispered into my fur. "I'm so sorry. I can't give you a good life. I can't give you anything. They took everything from me—my home, my family, my future. All I have left is you, and you're just a normal beast. You'll never be strong enough to protect me. I'll never be strong enough to protect you."
Her voice cracked on the last word, and something in my chest—my small, fuzzy chest—twisted painfully.
I didn't know who "they" were. Didn't know what had been taken, or why this girl was crying like her world had ended. But I knew that sound. That hopeless, broken sound.
I'd heard it from myself, late at night in my apartment, after another day of being invisible at work. Another day of wondering if my life would ever mean anything.
The girl clutched me tighter. "But you're mine now. The bond is sealed. And I promise—no matter how weak we are, I won't abandon you. We're all each other has."
Light suddenly exploded between us.
It burst from her chest and mine, golden and blinding, filling the room with heat. The girl gasped. I would've screamed if I could. Power rushed through me like electricity, connecting me to her in a way I couldn't explain—I felt her emotions like they were my own. Her despair. Her determination. Her fierce, desperate love for something she'd just met.
And underneath it all, buried deep—rage. Not at me. At whoever had broken her.
The light faded, leaving us both panting. The girl stared at me with wide eyes. "What was that? That wasn't a normal bonding. The light was too bright. Too strong."
I stared back at her, equally confused. But now I felt something impossible—a connection. A thread tying my soul to hers. I knew, with absolute certainty, that I couldn't leave her even if I wanted to. We were bound. Permanently.
Great. I die, become a tiger, and now I'm magically chained to a crying stranger. Could this day get any weirder?
The door slammed open.
A man stepped in—tall, handsome, with ice-blue eyes and an expression of pure disgust. Behind him, a younger girl who looked like a prettier version of my girl. A phoenix made of actual fire perched on her shoulder.
"So it's true," the man said coldly. "You actually bonded a common tiger cub. How pathetic, Sera."
Sera. So that was her name.
The girl—Sera—stood up, cradling me protectively. "Get out, Cassian."
"That's 'Duke Cassian' to you now," he replied. "Since our engagement is obviously over. I need a wife worthy of my status. Elena here has a legendary phoenix. You have..." He looked at me with disgust. "...a housecat."
The pretty girl—Elena—smiled sweetly. "I'm sorry, sister. But beasts choose their true masters. The phoenix knew I was stronger. Just like Cassian knows who the better choice is."
Something clicked in my brain. Sister? This Elena girl was Sera's sister? And she'd stolen both the phoenix and the fiancé?
Sera's arms trembled around me. Through our new bond, I felt everything—her heartbreak, her humiliation, her crushing sense of failure.
And I felt something else. Something from me.
Rage.
I'd spent my whole life being pushed around. Being ignored. Being told I wasn't good enough, smart enough, important enough. And I'd died—died—doing the one meaningful thing I'd ever done, saving a kid who'd get to live the life I never had.
I was done being worthless.
This girl—this Sera—had saved me from the darkness of that egg. She'd promised not to abandon me when I was nothing. She'd cried over me when I was supposedly useless.
Nobody got to hurt her. Not anymore.
Cassian stepped closer, his voice dropping to something almost pitying. "I'm being generous, Sera. Leave that thing behind, apologize to your family, and maybe—maybe—I'll let you work in my estate's beast kennels. It's better than you deserve."
Sera's grip on me tightened. I felt her decision forming before she spoke.
"Get. Out."
Cassian's eyes widened. "Excuse me?"
"You heard me." Sera's voice shook, but her words came out clear. "I don't need your pity. I don't need your engagement. And I definitely don't need a man who'd betray me for my backstabbing sister." She looked down at me, and through our bond, I felt her determination crystallize into steel. "I have my tiger. And that's enough."
She turned her back on them.
For a long moment, nobody moved. Then Cassian laughed—a cold, bitter sound. "You'll regret this. Both of you."
The door slammed again.
Sera collapsed against the wall, sliding down until she sat on the floor, still holding me. "I hope I didn't just make the biggest mistake of my life," she whispered.
Through our bond, I sent the only emotion I could: You didn't.
She looked down at me, startled. "Can you... understand me?"
Before I could figure out how to respond, footsteps echoed outside. Multiple pairs. Angry voices.
The door burst open again, and this time, an older man and woman stood there. The woman had Sera's eyes. The man had Elena's cold smile.
"You're expelled from House Whitstone, effective immediately," the man announced. "Pack your things. You have until sunset."
Sera's parents. They were throwing her out. Their own daughter.
The woman—Sera's mother—at least had the decency to look away. "You brought this on yourself, dear."
As they left, Sera buried her face in my fur, and her whole body shook with silent sobs.
I made a promise in that moment. A promise to myself, to the universe, to whatever cosmic force had stuck me in this tiger body:
Everyone who'd hurt this girl would pay. Her sister. Her ex-fiancé. Her parents. Every single person who'd made her cry.
I didn't know how yet. I was currently the size of a potato and couldn't even meow properly.
But I'd figure it out.
Because apparently, I'd been given a second chance at life. And this time, I wasn't going to waste it being worthless.
This time, I was going to matter.
The question was: how does a baby tiger destroy the lives of powerful nobles?
I looked at Sera's tear-stained face and felt our bond pulse with shared determination.
I guess we'll figure it out together.