I felt that I was in a dream, floating through a placid, lukewarm sea. It was an abnormally long dream, but I never grew tired of it. It was as if I lacked the ability to feel tired of anything, and my mind remained dull and blurry. In this world, my body and the environment were at comfortable temperatures, and I felt only bliss. There I remained in what felt like an endless slumber.
The tranquility persisted for about a week, or perhaps even a year, when I suddenly felt an intense pressure—like a pro-wrestler had put me in a headlock. My peace was brought to an abrupt end by a crushing sensation that gripped my head and squeezed my brain itself.
My first thought was that someone was trying to crack my skull and kill me, and I was filled with a sense of mortal peril. The panic soon gave way to a feeling of liberation, however, as though I’d woken from a nightmare. I was released from the unexplained compression and found myself in an open space. The sensation of floating disappeared, and then I was immersed in more warm fluid while arms and fingers cradled me. Once the clear water had cleansed my body, I was wrapped in a soft blanket and held by an unknown person.
I saw the world around me as no more than an indistinct blur, regardless of whether things were close by or some distance away. It was as if I’d been stricken with a serious case of both near and farsightedness. Something was wrong with my brain, similar to times when I’d gotten very drunk on good wine. Trying to satisfy my needs for food and sleep while trying to avoid sources of pain were as much as my feeble mind could handle.
I would instinctively suckle at the breast of some stranger as my vision filled with light and then faded to the dark of night repeatedly. After I’d been through that cycle ten or so times, my thoughts finally began to grow clear.
Am I still dreaming? This was the question I kept turning over in my hazy mind.
I’d felt like I was in a dream the entire time, but several days had gone by since the mysterious head pain. It didn’t make sense for me to have such long-term memories within a dream.
“Mm aah ii a deem?” I tried to put the thought into words, but my throat wouldn’t work well enough for me to speak.
Why did it all feel so real? Was I in heaven or hell? Or was this some sort of afterlife?
The last thing I remembered clearly was how I’d struggled in the cold water before drowning. My body had been chilled to its core, and I’d soon lost the ability to move. With that, I’d swallowed water and sunk into the river. In other words, I should have been dead. Yet I wasn’t in any pain, and I wasn’t cold.
But it was possible that I really had died. There was the possibility that past-life memories were something everyone had at first, something erased and forgotten the moment they started a new life, similar to the way that even remarkable dreams somehow faded from memory upon waking. The experiences that made me into the person I was would soon fade away in that case, but I wouldn’t have minded—it didn’t feel like much of a loss.
At any rate, these strangers would place me in a soft bed where my sole task seemed to be sleeping each day away. It was as though I’d been reduced to an infantile state, unable to tell whether I was awake or dreaming.
The person who presented their breasts to me appeared to be my mother. She stayed by my side each day, attending to my various needs. Having someone change my diaper made me feel like I’d turned into an infirm old man.
Her breasts were small, but my mother was very beautiful. Still, she looked unlike any person I’d ever known. She had none of the sharp features that would have suggested European descent, but she didn’t look Asian either. She had a calm and gentle face that I always wanted to look at. She was perfectly human for the most part, but her ears were clearly the wrong shape. They were somewhat pointed, and the tips were covered with the same hair that was on her head. Though her ears were pink around the earlobe, the hair covered the edges and tips. They certainly looked warm, but also unnatural.
The words she spoke were completely alien—I couldn’t understand a word of it. I guess it should have gone without saying that someone who looked like her wouldn’t speak Japanese. Whenever night fell, she’d swaddle me and wrap me up in her arms. She would hold me tightly and speak in a soft, yet clear voice. I suspected she told me fairy tales, but the words were as meaningless to me in that state as everything else she said.
Now and then, my father would take turns caring for me. If we were in a Japanese town, there was no doubt he would’ve caused the women to turn their heads as he walked down the road. When he held me in his arms, I felt hard muscle that suggested the slim body beneath his clothes was surprisingly well built. His lean figure could have easily belonged to a boxer or rhythmic gymnast.
What sort of job would make a man turn out like that? It was a total mystery.
Based on their living standards, I didn’t think we were in modern times. Their clothes were all made of natural fibers, the uneven threads of the fabric suggesting they were all handmade. Once, my mother had taken me into the kitchen, and I’d noticed that they were still using a kiln. We had to be out in the sticks. The only noises at night were the calls of forest animals, and the house rarely had visitors.
The place felt too well built to be some rural shack, and there was often meat on the dinner table. That made me think they were well-off. As far as I could tell, my mother was a full-time housewife, and there were no signs of them struggling to get by. But the lack of any visitors meant they probably weren’t merchants, so I could only assume they were wealthy farmers.
It remained a mystery, and I wouldn’t be able to ask until I’d learned to speak. All I could do was snooze the days away in my crib while guessing at the meanings of the words they spoke.
A year flew by as I lounged in that absentminded state.
✧✧✧
A year had passed without my consciousness fading like a forgotten dream. It seemed that I was going to continue living as a little boy.
Being forced to start a new life on “New Game Plus” despite already being bored of my old one sounded like it should’ve been like a huge hassle, but it turned out it wasn’t so bad. It was nothing like the life I’d grown tired of because everything here was so novel—the environment, the people, and the many discoveries that lay in wait.
My Japanese parents weren’t crooks or anything, but I definitely wouldn’t have called them good people either. In this world, however, my mother and father loved and doted on me. The confusion I’d felt toward everyone else’s completely different outlook on life was now replaced with a feeling of comprehension—I realized that those people had been raised by loving families.
It was around then that I began to practice walking on two legs. I had expected it to be easy, but my weak little knees would easily buckle, and so much of my weight was in my head that I couldn’t keep my balance even when I did manage to stand up. I found it easier to get around by crawling.
I learned that my family had a custom of celebrating birthdays. I hadn’t kept track of the seemingly countless days that passed, but a full cycle of the seasons had passed when they threw something like a birthday party. The three of us celebrated with a fairly extravagant meal. That said, I was given the same old gruel, complete with small chunks of meat, that always served as my baby food. Nevertheless, I was definitely the cause of festivity, which meant it had to be my birthday.