The world returned in fragments.
A flickering ceiling fan. The distant chirp of birds. The faint scent of pine, laundry detergent, and vanilla air freshener. Then — pain.
Ren Bai's eyes snapped open.
His breath hitched, chest rising too fast for the small body it now inhabited. The ceiling above him wasn't metal and matte black like the apartment he remembered in 2045. It was cracked plaster, yellowing at the corners. Sunlight filtered through blinds beside the bed, slashing across unfamiliar posters of soccer players and a half-built Lego pirate ship.
He sat up, and the covers fell off a thin chest — not his. The hands he raised to his face were too small, soft, the nails bitten down. He stumbled to the mirror beside the closet.
Staring back at him was a boy. Eight years old, maybe nine. Pale skin, dark eyes, hair too long on one side. Alive. Awake. Real.
"…What the hell?" His voice was young. High-pitched. That startled him more than anything else.
For a long moment, he stood frozen, processing. Panic scratched at the edges of his mind, but beneath that — a low, electric current of understanding.
He had died. Clearly.
The memory was vivid. The fire, the sparks. A last experiment gone wrong. He had been testing a new kind of nanotech integration — his passion, his obsession — when the overload hit. Then only darkness.
And now this.
But his mind… it was intact. His memories of 2045 were crisp. Code sequences, patent designs, lines of technical jargon — all embedded like DNA.
He dropped to the floor and yanked a spiral-bound notebook from the desk drawer, flipped to a clean page, and picked up a pencil.
Test 1: Cognitive Retention
– Basic calculations: √1024 = 32 ✅– Logical reasoning puzzle (Knight & Knave variant) — 48s ✅– Full hexadecimal-to-decimal translation table (16x16) — memorized ✅– Alphabet backwards while timing breathing: ✅– Random access memory recall (12-digit keys): ✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅
He blinked at the list, heart racing. His brain wasn't slowed. If anything, the younger biology made it faster. Clearer. Like overclocking a system without the heat risk.
He paused. Tapped the pencil to his lip.
What was this?
A fluke? A simulation?
Or… reincarnation?
He didn't believe in the supernatural — or hadn't. But this wasn't science. Not yet. He was eight years old in a new life, and if he was honest, a small, scared part of him didn't want to find the rules that explained it.
Not yet.
Ren didn't come out of his room for hours. The knock on the door came gentle at first, then firmer.
"Ren? Are you okay?" It was a woman's voice — unfamiliar, but warm. A mother's voice. He hesitated.
"I'm fine."
"Okay, sweetie. Dinner in twenty minutes."
He stared at the door long after her footsteps faded.
Sweetie. That wasn't a word anyone used for him before.
At dinner, he sat quietly across from two adults who looked nothing like the sterile, polished professionals of his last life. His new father had a square jaw, a broad back, and calloused hands from real work. His mother had kind eyes, a dusting of flour on her sweater, and tired lines at the corners of her mouth.
They were real. Not corporate. Not synthetic. The kitchen was lived-in. A bowl of fruit, a pile of mail. Fridge magnets.
They smiled at him like he was the center of their world.
Something inside him cracked open — just a little.
"You okay, Ren?" his father asked.
Ren nodded. "Just tired."
He learned that night that his name was still Ren Bai. His parents had immigrated from China five years ago and now lived in a small suburb just outside Forks, Washington. His father worked construction; his mother was a nurse's aide at the local clinic.
No wealth. No fame. But a warm bed, real hugs, and pancakes on Sundays.
Ren quietly resolved to protect them.
Over the next few weeks, Ren adapted — outwardly. He played the part of the shy, quiet son. Said the right things, smiled when expected. But behind closed doors, the genius from 2045 reawakened.
The internet was still in its infancy — crude, slow, full of holes. But to Ren, it was a playground.
He spent hours at night building encryption models, mapping old security protocols, identifying vulnerabilities in early e-commerce APIs. His fingers danced across the keyboard with muscle memory far beyond a child's.
He built simple bots to crawl pricing sites. Then scripts that automatically scanned for arbitrage in collectibles. Then tools that forecast tech stocks using 5-year projection methods no one would even understand until 2030.
He started making money by age nine.
In a weathered black notebook hidden in the hollow space beneath a loose floorboard, he began to journal. The writing was meticulous, coded, layered in metaphors and technical cipher.
Day 47 – They're kind. My new parents. Mom hums when she makes tea. Dad talks to the television like it's a friend. I haven't laughed yet, but I'm smiling more. They don't know what I am. Maybe I don't either. But if I'm here, I'll build something better for them. This world. This body. This chance—it means something.
They gave me life. I'll give them the world.
By the end of that first year, Ren Bai had a full crypto mining rig humming in the garage (built from scraped parts and hidden under toolboxes). He was investing in domains, flipping online auctions, and quietly purchasing assets through pseudonyms.
His parents never asked too many questions. He made sure his grades were spotless. His manners impeccable.
But every night, after they went to bed, Ren returned to the screen — the glowing matrix of numbers that had once defined his entire life.
And yet… something was different this time.
He wasn't building for glory. Or patents. Or corporate dominion.
He was building home.
One night in early December, snow falling silently outside the window, Ren sat beside his bedroom heater, flipping a gold coin between his fingers. He'd earned it — not just the money, but the peace.
This life would be different.
No sterile labs. No empty relationships. No dying alone with blueprints etched into your chest.
He had time now. Real time.
To grow. To protect. To understand who — and what — he really was.
The memories of metal bending, the whisper of something ancient in his blood — that could wait.
Right now, he had something more important.
A family.
A life.
A second chance.
He closed his notebook, placed it under his bed, and whispered to the dark room with the certainty of a vow:
"If I'm alive again, I won't waste it. Not this time."