Prelude
Pain was the first thing Satou noticed.
That, and the fact that the pain felt… wrong.
It wasn't the familiar ache of a stiff neck after sleeping at a desk, or the dull throb behind the eyes after staring at code for thirty hours straight. This pain was softer. Smaller. Spread through limbs that felt too light, too weak, like they hadn't been used properly yet.
Which was strange.
Because Satou distinctly remembered not sleeping at all.
He remembered fluorescent lights buzzing overhead.
He remembered lines of error logs blurring together.
He remembered coffee that stopped working after the fifth cup.
He remembered finishing the last bug fix, pushing the final build, leaning back—
—and opening his phone.
Let Me Game in Peace.
His favorite novel. His stress relief. His bad habit.
He remembered reading a paragraph.
Then… nothing.
No darkness.
No tunnel.
No divine voice asking philosophical questions.
Just this.
Satou opened his eyes.
The ceiling above him was unfamiliar—plain, white, with faint cracks running like thin veins. The air smelled clean, faintly medicinal. He tried to move, and immediately discovered a second problem.
His body didn't listen.
Not properly, at least.
His arms moved, but sluggishly. His fingers curled with effort. His legs felt short. Too short.
"…Hah?"
The sound that came out of his mouth wasn't the voice of a twenty-something game developer who had survived multiple crunch periods.
It was thin. High. Unstable.
Satou froze.
A cold realization slid down his spine.
This… is not my body.
He strained, pushing against the weakness, forcing his head to turn. A reflective surface—glass, maybe a cabinet—caught his eye.
What stared back at him was a child's face.
Black hair.
Soft features.
Eyes too large for the face.
Not a baby—but definitely not an adult.
"…You've got to be kidding me."
The words came out slurred, half-formed, but the thought behind them was perfectly clear.
Reincarnation. Classic.
He didn't panic. Not because he was brave—he absolutely wasn't—but because exhaustion had a way of flattening emotions. After surviving thirty hours of continuous debugging, even death felt like an inconvenience rather than a tragedy.
He lay there, staring at the ceiling, cataloging facts like he always did.
I died while reading a novel.
I woke up in a child's body.
This isn't Earth.
That last conclusion came not from intuition, but from context. The room felt different. The silence had a weight to it. And deep down, some instinct—one he didn't remember having before—told him this world did not run on the same rules.
Footsteps approached.
The door opened.
Two adults entered his field of vision, their expressions tense, worried, relieved all at once. They spoke quickly, voices overlapping, words unfamiliar but somehow understandable.
Language adjustment. Another trope box checked.
As they leaned over him, Satou caught fragments.
"…He's awake…"
"…same age…"
"…Zhou Wen…"
That name stuck.
Zhou Wen.
Satou didn't know why yet, but something about it resonated. Like a filename you didn't recognize at first, until you realized it was part of a project you'd worked on for years.
And then it clicked.
Wait.
Zhou Wen… as in—
His thoughts stalled.
No. That was impossible.
And yet, the more he searched his memory, the clearer it became.
A modern world.
Dimensional creatures.
Companion beasts.
A game that wasn't a game.
Let Me Game in Peace.
Satou closed his eyes.
"…Of course," he thought tiredly. "I finally get reincarnated, and it's into my favorite deathtrap of a novel."
He exhaled slowly, accepting reality with the same resigned professionalism he'd applied to impossible deadlines.
New world. New body. Same me.
One thing, at least, was clear.
He was the same age as Zhou Wen.
The story hadn't started yet.
Which meant—
Good. Plenty of time to lie low.
Somewhere deep within his consciousness, something stirred. Not a voice. Not a notification. Just a presence—vast, patient, watching.
It did nothing.
No interface appeared.
No prompts flashed.
No power flooded his veins.
Whatever it was, it waited.
Satou, now trapped in a child's body, smiled faintly.
"Yeah, yeah," he thought. "Stay quiet. I like it that way."
Outside, the world continued turning.
Unaware that two brothers had just begun their lives.
And that one of them was very, very determined to survive without ever becoming the main character.