When I finally drifted awake again after the humiliating diaper incident—still mortified, still tiny, still fully aware that dignity was something I would not be allowed to possess for a long time—Being alive again turned out to be… incredibly boring.
Not dramatic. Not heroic. Not even particularly mystical.
Just boring.
The first few days after my birth were pure chaos—blinding light, humiliation, and sensory overload. But by the time the first week passed, the chaos settled into something worse.
A routine.
Wake up.
Be confused.
Be hungry.
Eat.
Poop.
Be carried somewhere.
Be carried back.
Sleep.
Repeat.
If reincarnation had a tutorial phase, I was stuck deep in it.
But the biggest problem of this newborn life wasn't the diapers.
Or the helplessness.
It was my eyes.
Specifically: whatever cursed upgrade was strapped onto them.
Because the moment I opened them after birth, the world detonated into unbearable brightness—like staring into a stadium spotlight from two meters away. No shapes. No colors. Just a violent white blast.
At first, I thought I'd spawned in blind.
Or defective.
Or both.
But over the first month, I learned something important.
I wasn't blind.
Not even close.
My vision was too good.
Way, way too good.
Whenever my eyelids opened—even a crack—it felt like someone was shining an industrial-grade flashlight directly into my brain. Not my eyes, my brain.
And nothing changed whether I tried to squint or widen them. Newborn muscles were useless.
It wasn't physical light blinding me.
It was information.
A tidal wave of visual data my tiny baby-brain couldn't process.
It was only after many attempts, all ending in migraines and instant exhaustion, that the pattern became clear:
The moment I opened my eyes, some kind of advanced sight ability activated.
The information pouring in overwhelmed my underdeveloped nerves.
My brain overheated like a laptop running triple-4K monitors.
Closing my eyes was the only relief.
I didn't know what this sight was supposed to be.
But I knew this:
My vision wasn't normal.
And over the month, something else became obvious.
It was getting… better.
Barely.
Like 0.001% better.
But even that microscopic improvement was enough for me to notice.
The brightness was still blinding, but not as instantly catastrophic as day one. Shapes were still impossible to see, but the world no longer felt like someone detonated a flashbang inside my skull.
Which meant one thing:
My brain was adapting.
"Temporary… it has to be temporary," I told myself after one particularly successful half-second peek. "My baby brain just needs time to upgrade its firmware."
That tiny improvement became my only real hope.
I clung to it like a lifeline.
With my eyes mostly closed, my world became sound.
The soft voice—the gentle person who held me most—was warm and soothing. I didn't know her name, but she spoke near me often. Her presence meant safety, warmth, and food. If I had to guess, she was probably my mother… but guessing wasn't the same as knowing, and I didn't trust my conclusions without evidence.
Then there was the cool voice. Calm. Deep. Always controlled. Whenever he entered the room, the air felt subtly heavier. The way the others moved around him—more formal, more alert—made me think he held some authority. If the soft voice was my mother, then he was likely my father. Again: likely. Not confirmed.
Two names came up constantly when they were together.
"Hiashi."
"Hikari."
Their tones fit them. The softer voice responded warmly to "Hikari." The deeper voice was often addressed with "Hiashi." It all lined up… but I'd been wrong before in life, and I wasn't ruling out the possibility that one of those names belonged to a visiting relative, an attendant, or literally anyone else living in this very busy household.
Then there was the third name.
"Hinata."
Sometimes spoken right next to me.
Sometimes said in soft affection.
Sometimes said in exasperation after a diaper disaster.
Based on pure context, the obvious conclusion was that I was Hinata.
But again—I refused to jump to conclusions.
For all I knew, Hinata could be someone else entirely. Another baby. A sibling. Or one of the attendants who drifted in and out of the room. Maybe even a pet, for all the clarity I had.
The only thing I could confirm with absolute certainty was this:
I was in a Japanese household.
Traditional architecture. Sliding doors. Tatami. A language I recognized but couldn't fully understand.
And whoever these people were—mother, father, servants, relatives—they weren't alone. Feet moved constantly around the home. Voices changed. People came and went.
My days blurred together.
Every morning began the same: waking in darkness behind my closed eyelids, feeling the soft blanket, hearing muted voices.
I learned to time my eye-opening tests carefully.
I would wake, wait until I felt fully rested, then slowly peel my eyelids apart by the tiniest possible fraction.
A blast of white.
A spike of pressure.
A wave of nausea.
I closed them immediately.
But once or twice each week, the torturous brightness lasted a fraction of a second less. And then, just barely, I began to detect something underneath the glare.
Not shapes.
Not colors.
But structure.
Patterns.
Like faint outlines beneath the overwhelming light. A hint that my vision was more than just broken flashbang mode.
Instinct whispered that what I was seeing—or rather, failing to properly see—was something beneath the physical world.
A layer under reality.
I didn't have the vocabulary for it.
Whatever it was, it didn't feel like normal light or normal vision. It felt deeper than that—like there was some hidden layer beneath everything, something my eyes weren't meant to handle yet. I didn't have a name for it. I didn't have the vocabulary. All I knew was that it wasn't anything I'd experienced in my old life, and the idea of eventually understanding it both intrigued and unsettled me.
The rest of the month passed in a monotone cycle of baby life, with occasional small highlights.
I began to recognize the feeling of being carried outside.
The air outside was phenomenal.
Cooler. Fresher. Cleaner than anything I remembered from my last Life.
Every breath felt crisp, like mountain air.
Even without vision, I could tell we were near gardens or greenery.
Sometimes the soft voice would laugh at the tiny content noises I made.
I wasn't making them for her.
I was making them for the sweet, sweet oxygen.
But if she wanted to take credit, fine.
I also started paying more attention to language.
Japanese surrounded me constantly.
Even though I couldn't understand full sentences, I recognized anime-learnt fragments:
"Daijoubu."
"-chan."
"Koko."
"Chotto."
It wasn't much.
Barely anything.
But it was familiar.
And comforting.
Every day, I tried to piece together more.
My comprehension was nonexistent, but my exposure was constant.
Eventually, I'd learn.
I'd have to.
My own body was another puzzle.
My arms could now flail with 20% more accuracy.
My hands occasionally reached my face instead of empty air.
And once—only once—I intentionally grabbed a lock of someone's hair.
I didn't mean to hurt her, but I heard a surprised yelp from the soft voice, followed by amused scolding.
I considered that a win.
Neck control was still a disaster, though.
Whenever someone lifted me upright, my head bobbed like a broken bobblehead.
I tried flexing whatever muscles I had, but they weren't ready.
Fine.
Let them grow.
Underneath all that, I sometimes felt the faint hum of that strange, warm energy.
Not clearly.
Not intentionally.
But like a warm current beneath my skin.
Whenever I focused on it too hard, someone in the room would freeze.
The soft voice would whisper something worried.
The cool voice would answer with calm reassurance.
And then the strange, subtle MC-perk would smooth over their concern like a warm breeze.
They never panicked.
Never questioned why a newborn pulsed with odd energy.
Just… accepted it.
It was unsettling how convenient that was.
Near the end of the month, I dared to test my eyes again.
One quiet night.
No footsteps outside.
No voices.
Just my breathing.
I slowly cracked my eyes open.
The brightness slammed into me—but softer than before.
The white blur slowly shifted.
Paper walls.
Tatami mats.
Wooden beams.
Shapes.
Still blinding, still overwhelming, still painful.
But shapes.
I closed my eyes again, heart racing in my tiny chest.
"Okay," I thought. "My brain is adapting. Very slowly. But it's happening."
And with that confirmation, a decision crystallized.
A quiet, stubborn, determined promise whispered into the darkness:
"I'll survive this stage. I'll grow. I'll learn. And when this vision finally stabilizes, I'll be unstoppable."
The room was silent.
Only my tiny breaths answered.
One month old.
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