They hadn’t noticed me, and I had the highly justifiable excuse of “rescuing a beautiful girl from delinquents,” so I remember doing it quite casually. I tased them from behind. But the sight of them violently convulsing on the ground, and foaming at the mouth like rabid dogs, shocked me. Panicking, I grabbed the hand of the girl I had just saved and ran away from the scene without thinking.
Looking back, I realize how immature I was.
Setting that aside, that spontaneous curiosity and spur-of-the-moment decision-making is how I ended up using those delinquents as test subjects for a stun baton and, incidentally, saving Aoi. But after some time had passed, along with various twists and turns, Aoi eventually became my stalker.
It wasn’t that bad during the few months between our first meeting and when I got my job right after graduating high school. However, once I started working, I found it quite troubling that she would follow me even to other planets where I had business. Instead of hiding and following me, she could have just talked to me normally. Truly, she shouldn’t have been keeping tabs on my private life in the first place.
Anyway, moving on. I might explain that in more detail later, but let’s get back to the main story for now.
On my way home after buying alcohol, I encountered Aoi. Well, “encountered” might not be the right word. Standing under the streetlight, with her head down, Aoi was emanating a dark aura that was in stark contrast to her usual energetic puppy-like demeanor. I tilted my head in confusion. I knew something was wrong the moment I saw her. But despite her stalking, Aoi was still like a sister to me, so I could never think too badly of her.
Worried, I called out to her, but she didn’t respond. Aoi stayed silent with her head down, making it impossible to see her expression. An overwhelming and inexplicable sense of unease washed over me, so I stepped closer to ask what was wrong. Just as I opened my mouth to speak, she suddenly jabbed me deep in the stomach with a sheath knife.
The twisting of the knife blade as it rotated inside me caused excruciating pain and gouged into my internal organs. Up to that point, it was still an injury that could have healed without a trace if I’d received regenerative treatment. If it had been an ordinary metal sheath knife, I would have been able to fight back and wouldn’t have been so easily killed.
What Aoi used wasn’t an ordinary sheath knife. It was a B-rank lightning-infused small blade called the Nene Karuri, manufactured by Sakuma Heavy Industries—the company my uncle worked for, ironically enough. To explain the Nene Karuri simply, it is a monomolecular cutter equipped with a high-performance stun gun and several other advanced capabilities.
Not only did the knife’s edge—fitted with thousands of tiny blades like a chainsaw—increase its sharpness through high-speed movement, but it is also an adaptive close-combat weapon that automatically adjusted to the optimal cutting angle using liquid nanomachines flowing through tubes covering the entire blade. Plus, it delivered a high-voltage current strong enough to burn the internal organs of the person stabbed, making it a tool that even professional soldiers used.
I didn’t have time to think about why Aoi had such a weapon. The fact was, she had it, and before I could react, I was pinned down, staring up at that beautiful full moon again. What happened next couldn’t have been more unbelievable. Aoi repeatedly drove the blade of the knife into my torso, over and over again. The relentless stabbing and gouging left me confused and disoriented, and vomiting a positively abnormal quantity of blood. With each thrust of the knife, fresh blood sprayed everywhere. I could feel the blade tearing through my flesh and bones with a grinding noise, shredding my organs to ribbons.
Oddly, amid the chaos, I found myself thinking that Aoi looked somewhat fantastical as she straddled me and became increasingly drenched in my blood. But by then, any sense of rationality I had was completely gone.
My dangerous profession had required me to undergo enhancement surgery to become Augmented—more than human—so how could I have been so easily killed by an ordinary person like Aoi? Sure, I knew firsthand the capabilities of the Nene Karuri, but was it really possible for a regular person to overpower an Augmented man like me, even with the element of surprise on their side? Was it because of the high-voltage current that I couldn’t move? Or…
Well, it’s no use trying to rationalize. The sight of Aoi drenched in my blood was too vivid to recall any of the details of that moment clearly.
The fact is, I was dead. Aoi stabbed me to death. I suffered fatal injuries that even regenerative treatment couldn’t heal. The last thing I saw was the tip of the knife approaching my eye, and since the brain is the only organ that can’t be regenerated, when that blade destroyed my brain, I was absolutely, finally dead. As my consciousness faded into darkness, I felt the sensation of my skull and brain being sliced apart. Without a doubt, that was the exact moment I died.
The story doesn’t end there. If it did, I wouldn’t have been talking about reincarnation.
When I regained consciousness, even though I was already enveloped in complete darkness, I realized I still existed as a separate, persistent individual. I remembered the sight that convinced me I had died before losing consciousness—the knife about to destroy my brain—but here I was, clearly not dead. For a brief instant, an unusual thought crossed my mind: Was I having some drunken nightmare?
No, that wasn’t it. Instinctively, I knew this was different. Indeed, I had been killed. I could still clearly remember the cold metal of the blade that tore through my chest and the excruciating pain of the high-voltage current that burned through my organs. It was definitely not an illusion. I definitely received fatal injuries from Aoi. But I was alive. The fact that I could still think like this was proof of that.
I wanted to know the reason. I was desperate to understand what happened and how it came to be. Driven by this desire, I forced my heavy eyelids open and saw…
A hideous face with green skin staring down at me.
That was the decisive moment that made me realize I had been reincarnated.
Ah… Sorry, I’m suddenly feeling very sleepy. I’ll continue tomorrow…
My consciousness faded away, not into the darkness of death, but was rocked gently in the cradle of sleep brought on by mental exhaustion.