You know how they say "with age comes wisdom"?
Yeah, that's a lie.
Because at the ripe age of one and a half, wisdom was nowhere to be found—but shame? Shame was abundant.
My current body was small, chubby, and criminally underpowered. I was a baby, plain and simple. I couldn't run, couldn't read, couldn't even wipe my own butt. But mentally? I was still me. A fully grown man, stuck in a toddler's flesh prison, watching the world through giant anime baby eyes.
And let me tell you something.
This. Was. Hell.
Let's talk about the first betrayal: my reflection.
In my old life, I wasn't exactly model material, but I had at least grown into my looks. Kind of. Maybe. Sometimes. But here? Every time I saw myself in a mirror, I felt pain. Big cheeks, pudgy limbs, weirdly shiny eyes like I was constantly on the verge of tears—oh, and a massive head.
Seriously, why are babies' heads so goddamn big?
Top-heavy and clumsy, I spent my days bumping into walls like a drunk hamster. My pride died a thousand deaths with each fall, each diaper change, each bottle of lukewarm milk. I tried rejecting the bottle once—to assert dominance. I lasted ten minutes before crying like someone just killed my dog.
The milk won. Every time.
But that wasn't the worst part.
No, the real crisis came when I started noticing… things.
See, my mother was beautiful. I don't mean hot in the weird "stepmom from a manga" way. I mean genuinely, soul-warmingly beautiful. Soft golden hair, violet eyes that sparkled when she smiled, and a gentle voice that could put even the angriest of infants to sleep.
And here's the thing.
She breastfed us.
At first, I was cool with it. It's natural, it's healthy, blah blah blah. But as time passed and my old memories reawakened in full force, so did my understanding of exactly what was happening.
My adult mind knew what I was doing.
And it haunted me.
Imagine being fully aware while clinging to your mom's chest, knowing exactly what it looks like from an outside perspective. Every suck brought with it a fresh wave of existential dread. I wanted to disappear into the floor. I tried to switch to the bottle, but my baby body was weak. After a few days of struggling, I gave in like the shameless little goblin I was.
And then came Akira.
Oh, that smug bastard. That blessed golden child with his sunny smile and sparkly eyes. My twin. My nemesis. My daily reminder that I was losing the genetic lottery.
While I struggled to walk, he was sprinting. While I mumbled, he babbled full sentences. While I drooled on myself, he looked like a child model for "Adorable Village Baby Monthly."
And the worst part?
He always got the left boob.
That was my favorite.
I don't know why I cared. Maybe it was softer? Warmer? More emotionally fulfilling? Regardless, the moment Akira latched onto it with his smug little baby smirk, I knew I had a problem.
Was I… jealous of a baby over a boob?
Yes. Yes, I was.
God forgive me.
Despite the daily humiliation, I didn't lose hope. Not completely. Because I had something Akira didn't: a lifetime of memories. I knew how this world worked. Or rather, I knew how fantasy worlds worked. Magic, monsters, guilds, the whole deal. And I was determined to make use of it.
From the day I saw Mother use a spell to dry our clothes in midair, I knew.
I wanted to be a mage.
I wanted to shoot fireballs, teleport through walls, maybe even blow up a kingdom or two. For fun. For vengeance. For justice.
But mostly, to compensate for the fact that I currently couldn't even reach the damn toilet.
So I started observing.
Every time Mother chanted a spell, I listened. I studied the rhythm, the words, the hand movements. When she levitated a pot or created light, I'd squint, trying to see if there was a visible flow of mana.
There wasn't. At least, not to my eyes. Yet.
Father, on the other hand, was a different kind of fascinating. A former knight turned blacksmith, he was the quiet, stoic type. Muscles like boulders, voice like a landslide. When he wasn't working the forge, he was reading or tending the garden with hands that had once crushed skulls in war.
I liked him.
He didn't say much, but when he looked at me, I didn't feel judged. Just… seen.
Once, I toddled into the forge while he was hammering something. Instead of shooing me away, he picked me up with one arm and set me on a barrel, then went back to work without a word.
The heat, the sparks, the rhythm—it mesmerized me.
For the first time, I felt something stir in my chest.
Purpose.
Meanwhile, Akira was still being… Akira.
He made friends with the neighbor's cat, helped Mother cook (by accidentally tossing salt everywhere), and somehow managed to charm every old lady in the village by simply existing.
He was the kind of child people wrote songs about.
And I?
I was the goblin in the corner, staring at spell books I couldn't read, drooling occasionally, and mumbling incantations like a cursed monk.
The first time I tried to chant a spell, I almost passed out.
"Li—Lumen… Sphere…"
pfffft
Nothing happened.
Akira clapped anyway.
"Yay Sowa! You do'd it!"
I wanted to punch him.
A few weeks later, Mother brought home an old book from the market. It was basic. Pictures of circles, diagrams of elements, and large letters drawn for children.
But when she handed it to us, something changed.
I reached out with shaking hands, my baby fingers brushing the rough cover.
A book.
A real book.
In that moment, I remembered everything—my lonely childhood, the hours I spent reading in silence, the dreams I had of becoming something more. I didn't cry, but my throat ached.
Akira, of course, immediately tried to eat it.
"Don't chew the binding, Akira," I muttered under my breath.
Mother blinked. "Sora? Did you just say a full sentence?"
Oops.
I had been keeping my speech to a minimum. Didn't want to freak anyone out with my baby genius act. But I'd slipped.
Too late now.
Mother smiled warmly. "You're both growing up so fast."
She didn't seem suspicious. Just proud.
That night, I stayed up late—well, as late as a baby could before passing out drooling. I clutched the book close to my chest and whispered to myself:
"I'm going to learn magic. I'm going to be powerful. I'm going to live a life worth living."
Akira snored in the bed beside me.
I looked over at him and muttered, "And I'm gonna beat your smug little ass too."
Time passed. We were now two years old. Still babies, technically, but with slightly more control over our limbs and slightly less drooling. Only slightly.
Our vocabulary grew. Our personalities solidified.
I was quiet, focused, a bit intense. Akira was cheerful, impulsive, and oddly philosophical for a toddler.
"Do birds pee?" he once asked.
I didn't have the heart to tell him I didn't know either.
Our bond grew stronger. We weren't just rivals anymore. We were brothers. Twin stars circling the same gravity well. Where I was weak, he was strong. Where he faltered, I picked up the slack. We fought, sure. I bit him once. He bit back. But we also held hands when crossing rivers and shared stolen berries from the garden.
Together, we were unstoppable.
Well… almost.
One day, while trying to cast a spell alone in the forest, I overdid it.
I'd been practicing a light orb spell all week. Muttering the words. Visualizing the mana flow. Doing everything I could to make it happen.
And then… I felt it.
A tingle. A pulse. Something shifted inside me.
"Lumen Sphere!"
And boom.
A tiny orb of light flickered into existence before popping like a soap bubble.
I screamed.
"AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!"
I did it. I really did it. I used magic.
I fell to my knees (and by that I mean I dropped onto my diaper) and laughed until tears rolled down my cheeks.
This was it. The turning point. The first step on the long, painful, beautiful road to power.
I could feel it.
My old life—the bullying, the loneliness, the quiet resentment in the eyes of relatives who only kept me around out of obligation—it still lingered in the corners of my mind. I was the extra plate at dinner, the shadow in the background, the boy no one chose. I never knew what it felt like to be wanted, to be cherished. To be loved.
But here, in this strange and magical world, things were different.
I had a family. A real one.
And this time…
I wouldn't waste it.