So…
I woke up… inside a CHILD's body.
With scant memories of my previous self, well, except for the fact that I was a sort of an outcast who understood human complexity from anime and manga rather than from socialising with others.
I was in my early twenties when I died, but I don't even remember how.
In hindsight, I see that I can't remember much probably because my life was just that unmemorable.
Character development eluded me as my time stood still, far from other people's reality, my self dwelling mostly inside my own fictional world.
I don't even know where I-
"Ryōma! Dinner's ready, come out of your room and go wash your hands before you come to the dining room, I'll check so don't even think about tricking me!"
At the sound of his new 'mother' calling for him, Ryōma, as he was now called, rolled his eyes and went to the bathroom to wash his hands.
Being treated like a child, didn't sit right with him, but what could he do? He would have to change his parents' perspective with time and effort, showing them maturity that would leave them stunned and prideful.
A smirk appearing on his face as he thought of this.
These aren't my real parents, but my wellbeing will have to depend on them for quite some time. It is in my interest to stay in their good graces.
Re-establishing his distance from this new reality, he got to the dinner table and sat on the spot in front of his mother, adjacent to his father standing at the head of the table.
They ate with the same unnerving and solemn composure he found out they always did, making a big deal about manners, gratefulness and other conventions.
The dinner was humble, that was what they could afford, but it went swiftly, seamlessly heading towards an end. Once he was done eating, Ryōma looked at his parents and spoke feigning ignorance.
"The other kids in the village told me that really special people exist in this world, is it true? I want to know more."
He lied through his teeth, six year old children were clueless, especially countryside brats, since they lived in this rural, forsaken by civilisation village.
Still, he figured out from the rambling of a brat talking about his cousin's neighbour's friend that had apparently a cousin who lived inside a city where gigantic metal husks flew in the sky and smaller metal "vi-hickles" moved through streets and gigantic buildings rose to the sky, that even though their barebones village could have belonged to any time era in history, an actual civilised world with actually modern cities existed in this world, tremendously easing his concerns about the tenure and expectancy of life he was supposed to have.
So he had figured out that if this world was this advanced, they probably had some cartoons', comics' or whatever characters that had probably turned into urban legends like Santa was in his previous world, undistinguished from reality through a child's eye.
By asking this ambiguous question, he wanted to figure out if he was in a normal world where heroes where children fiction or if he had actually landed in a fantasy world.
He figured he wouldn't get scolded, since even though his parents had lived all their lives in this stiff, backwater culture, they actually doted and supported him, manifesting their love in their own unsure way.
His father, a man of few words, silently contemplated whilst adorning his very own Clint Eastwood's frown-stare mono expression, weighing what he was about to say.
After a while of silence he looked at Ryōma and opened his mouth.
"Are you talking about hunters?"
Ryōma's pupils became needle thin, his expression unable to hide his inner shock.
No way! No way!! I'm in the hunter x hunter world?!
He needed to know more, he couldn't care less about being discreet or calculated!
"They also talked about big "sieties" what are those? Where are we in the world, dad?"
His father raised an eyebrow but obliged how question.
"We are in the inner land of the kakin empire."
"Ohhhh- what is an empire?"
He played the fool and fake listened as his father explained in a language his six year old could understand.
Meanwhile, inside his head, a true storm was boiling.
I am in the hunter x hunter world…
The thought subverted all the logic he had built and he was left flabbergasted by his surging emotions. Unadulterated joy for transmigrating into his favourite manga and terrifying dread for the dangers that were to come.
I have to unlock my aura as soon as possible!
That thought stuck in his head, incessantly occupying his brain as he desperately struggled to look normal and not alert his parents of any weirdness.
Every minute he had to sit still at the able gnawing at him.
When the dinner finally ended, he bolted into his room and closed the door.
He sat on the bed in a meditative position, trying to feel the famous aura nodes so that he could open them.
This was the HxH world, his favourite, he remembered a lot about theory, lore and canon.
Unlocking nen was the priority and gate to survival in this new adventure.
All in all he had been lucky not to waste time and manage to discover the truth of the world just after a week he had transmigrated.
He didn't know where in the timeline he was, but since he hadn't heard anything about beyond netero or a succession struggle, things that would be known all throughout the most remote corners of the empire, it meant this was probably before Isaac netero's death and also before the apocalypse that were the ants and its king, meruem.
Not knowing how much time he had, he started to prepare, frantically trying to sense the aura nodes.
As the night progressed so did his dread about not knowing where in the timeline he stood.
After the fear and anxiety became too much to even try and meditate, let alone figuring out aura nodes, he stopped drew a deep breath and vowed not to worry about the unknown which he could do nothing about and keep on training, at least for the night.
***
The next day, Ryōma eagerly went out to play with his viallge 'friends' trying to fish for vital information.
It didn't take long until he hit the jackpot.
One kid had mentioned how a group of bandits would come and steal your eyes, just like they did to those people with the red eyes.
Kurta clan massacre. He thought.
He looked for a habitually strolling elder and asked when exactly those bad guys stole the eyes and the elder told him, that it happened exactly one year ago.
Not even thinking how unlogical it sounded for a six years old to grasp the length of a year, but that is how elderly people are right? They don't necessarily use common sense.
Anyway, once he understood that, it was time for training, he had roughly ten years before canon began and he was gonna make them count, becoming super strong before canon began, effectively assuring himself at least a chance of survival inside this crazy world.
***
Except…
Thaaaaaat didn't happen. At all.
After three years of constant training, during every single moment he was alone — or when he didn't have to pretend to be a kid, buttering up to his parents or going out to play with other kids to seem normal—, he still didn't even remotely grasp anything about aura nodes and thus about unlocking his aura, figuring out his nen type and creating a hatsu.
Don't get it wrong, he had done a lot of brainstorming and knew to a T what he wanted his hatsu to be, or at least hoped he could create such a hatsu, depending on his nen type. Besides that though, not much had gone as he had wished. This dread inducing fear of time slowly ticking forward as he remained powerless as canon approached, was excruciating torture.
He was getting desperate…