Chapter 1:
Reincarnation
KAZUYA GRADUALLY REGAINED CONSCIOUSNESS. Although his eyes were closed, he could feel the sunlight shining through the window. He opened his eyes and was greeted by an extravagantly decorated ceiling.
“Where am I?”
Kazuya couldn’t help but say the clichéd line as he roused his unfamiliar body and looked around. He usually slept in a typical single bed—the bed he found himself in now was significantly larger. The room was stylishly furnished. A chandelier hung from the ceiling, and bright rays of the sun shone through gaps in the curtains.
“Wow, I can’t believe they managed to save me. Which hospital is this, anyway? I can’t believe they arranged such a lavish room for me, this type of treatment is way too extravagant.”
As he looked around the room, he noticed movement nearby. Upon closer inspection, he realized that someone was leaning against the bed while asleep in the nearby chair. They were starting to wake up.
It was a young girl, about the size of a middle schooler. She was wearing a maid uniform. She rubbed her eyes before looking in Kazuya’s direction and freezing. Then, tears began to stream from her eyes.
“Master Cain!”
The girl suddenly jumped towards Kazuya. Still confused, Kazuya caught her, and the girl buried her face into his chest and began to sob.
“Thank goodness! You’ve been asleep for an entire week!” She cried, tightly grabbing and hugging Kazuya.
“Wait, what are you doing?!”
Kazuya swung his arms in an attempt to break free, but he had no way to overcome the difference in size.
Huh? Wait, I’m the smaller one? Also, why a maid and not a nurse?
Confused, Kazuya brought his hands in front of him and took a good look. His hands were clearly much smaller than those of a high schooler; they were about the size of an infant’s hands.
As he stared at his hands in a daze, the young maid released him and got up. “I’m going to let the Madam know!”
The young maid hurriedly opened the door and rushed out of the room. Kazuya had yet to grasp the situation as he continued to stare at his hands. “What happened to me…?” Kazuya began to open and close his hands, confirming they were his.
“I remember getting stabbed by the guy with a knife at the convenience store, seeing Manami, and then passing out… I should be at a hospital right now. That girl called me, ‘Cain,’ right? But my name is Kazuya…”
As he tried to organize his jumbled thoughts, a flurry of noise traveled down from the hallway before bursting into the room he was staying at.
“Cain! You’re awake! Thank goodness!”
A beautiful woman in her twenties entered the room. She had a good figure, long silver hair that reached her waist, and was wearing a well-made dress. Kazuya was completely dumbfounded, as he had never seen anyone remotely like her before.
The beautiful woman rushed over to Kazuya and began to hug him, joyful tears streaming down her face. Kazuya felt enveloped by her soft body and was suddenly struck by a mix of happiness and embarrassment.
“Cain, do you recognize me? You recognize your mother, don’t you? You passed out with an incredible fever and slept for an entire week.”
Kazuya could not make heads or tails of what the silver-haired beauty was saying. He had lost both parents when he was still young, and as best as he could tell, the woman standing before him was in her twenties—far too young to be his mother. Unable to settle his thoughts, Kazuya simply stared at her, dumbfounded.
“Madam, Master Cain just woke up, he might not be thinking straight,” said another maid, who had accompanied the woman into the room.
“That’s true, he was asleep for an entire week after all. Take your time and rest today. I’ll come check in on you again later. Reine was also really worried about you.”
The silver-haired beauty turned towards the young maid who had embraced Kazuya earlier and said, “Sylvia, your job today is to look after Cain. He should be able to have soup, can you prepare some for him?”
“Understood, Madam.” The silver-haired beauty claiming to be his mother and the maids accompanying her left the room to go prepare something to eat.
Kazuya, now alone, looked down at his hands again, opening and closing them once more. They definitely looked like they belonged to an infant. “Was I reincarnated like all those light novel protagonists? I guess they weren’t able to save me after all,” Kazuya muttered as he laid in bed, staring at the ceiling. “At least I was able to save Manami, so I won’t have to see Saori cry.”
Kazuya would occasionally talk about light novels with his classmates at school. In fact, he often read reincarnation stories, both in print and on his phone. Saori, his close friend, also loved light novels. They often lent books to each other.
“First, I have to figure out my current situation. It seems I’ve been asleep for an entire week.” He had apparently been in bed the entire time, and moving at all caused his joints to protest, so he settled for examining the area around the bed.
After a short while, he heard a knock at the door. The young maid from earlier entered the room while pushing a cart carrying a bowl of soup. “Master Cain, I’ve prepared some soup for you.”
Kazuya sluggishly got up. The maid placed the bowl of soup on the table next to the bed. Kazuya tried a spoonful. “…Delicious.”
The umami of the meat and vegetables had seeped into the broth, giving it a gentle taste.
As he drank the soup, Kazuya finally understood he had truly undergone reincarnation. With this new understanding, a new question entered his mind.
Um…I think her name was Sylvia?
“Sylvia, do you have a mirror?”
“Yes. You’ve gotten a little thinner since you didn’t eat at all while you were sleeping, but other than that, you look the same.”
Sylvia opened the drawer of the desk and took out a mirror, which she handed to Kazuya. The extravagant hand mirror was adorned with silver. Kazuya accepted it with both hands, and, after steeling himself, took a look.
The young boy reflected within the mirror had silver hair with blue highlights and sharp blue eyes. He looked about three years old. His facial features resembled that of the beautiful woman who claimed to be his mother. Kazuya was worried he might have been ugly. Since he seemed to take after his mother, he was likely to become quite the looker in the future. Kazuya inadvertently let out a sigh of relief.
He turned left and right, checking every angle of his face using the mirror. Sylvia suddenly joined him. “Master Cain, you don’t need to worry. You have the makings of an incredibly handsome man. You’re already so cute,” she said with a smile.
Kazuya was so absorbed examining himself in the mirror, he had completely forgotten Sylvia was there as well. Feeling a little embarrassed, he handed the mirror back to her.
“Thank you,” Kazuya said.
Accepting the mirror, Sylvia put it back into the drawer.
Kazuya slowly finished the rest of the soup. It was quite good, and before he knew it, he was already asking for seconds. It wasn’t entirely his fault, as he hadn’t eaten at all in the week he had been sleeping.
Kazuya spent the next three days idling away in bed. Although he had already recovered, Sylvia and the rest of his family told him to rest, just in case.
There was one big problem Kazuya had to deal with if he wanted to live as Cain in the future. Although he had already come to accept his new role and the fact he had reincarnated, he didn’t have any of Cain’s memories. He was able to confirm from Sylvia that he was indeed three years old, but he knew nothing about anything that happened prior to his reincarnation.