7:12 AM- BEIJING
Zhang Wenfu sat outside his mother's apartment. The rain dampened his pitch black hair, causing it to droop upon his head like a wet mop. Zhang knew what he had to do today, and he knew how.
9:47 PM- BEIJING SOUTH RAILWAY STATION
The gaunt 26 year old almost slipped down the steps, as he approached the tracks. A crowd of tired faces crammed the platform, making the already agoraphobic Zhang even more agitated, but he didn't mind, he tried to savor his last days on earth. As he walked towards the steep drop, his life flashed before his eyes. It was over.
As Zhang opened his eyes, the smell of melting beeswax filled his spry nostrils, and the sound of a lute filled his unprepared ears. He knew something was wrong. A train hitting him at a full speed surely would have killed him. Could this be the hospital, he pondered, but the polished wood floor and the ornate chandelier that hung below the ceiling like a stalagmite quickly showed him that where he was, was not anywhere he had been before.
A distinct sound was playing on loop in his ears, the sound of a baby crying. as the haze in his vision cleared he saw that he was being held and swayed by some giant creature. He heard the thing that held him in its grasp speak an unintelligible language, and as he was moved around this strange room he had found himself in, he observed that there wasn't just one giant, but multiple. He could identify 4 people in the room aside from the one holding him. One of the entities was a man— no, a boy, leaned against the doorframe, he looked about eleven or twelve. there was also a girl, she was definitely older but not exactly adult. The other two, the only ones that were definitely adults, consisted of an exhausted woman laid on a bed in the center of the room, and an older man, probably in his late fifties. They all wore wide grins on their faces, as if they had just been given a present that they had been waiting an entire lifetime to receive. Suddenly, he felt himself lowered into the arm of the woman lying in the bed, and while held close to her bosom he was able to observe more of the space. The room was something that he'd never seen before, one word to describe it could've been ornate. There were all sorts of paintings and silver mirrors fixtured to the walls. One mirror fixed high on the opposite wall caught his eye. At first he thought that he was looking at a painting, one that featured a newborn baby being coddled by his mother, but as he examined it closer he understood the truth. Somehow, some way, he had been reincarnated into the body of an infant. The mother that held him had light golden hair, and had tears running down her cheeks. He could tell she wasn't angry or sad, in fact the entire room seemed to radiate a sort of aura that instantly calmed him. Upon realizing that he was in fact the baby that had been crying, he gained control of his wails and ceased them immediately, similar to how your body forces you to breathe manually when the act of involuntary respiration is acknowledged. The golden hair of his mother started him. Never in his previous life had he ever met someone who looked like this, and it disturbed him. The very thought made him shudder— he had never been outside of his city, let alone in a strange land where he didn't even speak the language. His body quickly devised a plan to begin crying once more, this time not from the nature of the newborn, but the nature of the man, afraid. Just as he would've began crying, a feeling emerged. As he laid in the arms of his new mother, he felt calmed, like the myriad of problems that would arise from his seeming reincarnation would all be washed away. It felt almost as if he had slipped into a warm bath, and Zhang, even though he thought himself a 26 year old man, accepted it.
The man who previously held him began to walk towards him.
"Tobiah"
5 months went by but the boy felt as he had slept through them all. His perception of time had shifted into states of hunger, sleep and sadness.