The cold night wind touched his exposed torso, the sensation mixing with the pain from the previous blows reaching his brain, but that was at the back of his mind compared to the situation he found himself in now.
In his crouched position on the ground, he stared at that new unknown woman with a cautious expression and a confused look.
'Seriously, what the hell is going on here?' He kept trying to make sense of this series of bizarre events, but nothing he thought of made any sense.
Well, all except one.
His reincarnation.
'But there's no way she or anyone else could know that… or is there?' Getting up from the ground, Jonathan kept looking at the woman suspiciously. He didn't try to run because he knew it would be useless against that weapon.
"You don't need to be cautious with me, Jonathan." After those seconds of tense silence, the woman finally spoke while putting the futuristic-looking weapon into a holster on her thigh.
Jonathan took a step back, his body language growing tenser upon hearing her say his name.
"Who I am and how I know about you is something you'll find out at the right time, but not now since my time is short, so just know that I'm on your side and I'm not going to hurt you." She said, walking toward the car parked on the sidewalk.
He didn't give any response to that. It was kind of obvious—if she wanted to hurt him, she would've already done it. It wouldn't be hard with that weird gun anyway.
"You can't tell me who you are?" After a moment of silence, he asked.
"It's not that I can't, it's just that it's something complicated that needs time to explain, and I'm already at my limit. But I know you have many doubts—ask, I'll answer before I leave." The woman said, pushing the open car door aside and leaning forward to get in, her lower half still outside.
"Alright… in that case, who are you?" Jonathan asked, his tone now calmer though his brow was still furrowed in suspicion.
"My name is Maya. As for who exactly I am, that's complicated, and I'd like to explain it in more detail later, so for now, I'll just say I'm part of a group responsible for protecting you." She said while her body twisted as she did who-knows-what inside the car.
His brow furrowed even more in confusion. "Protecting me? From what? Why?"
"Like I said, it's complicated, and I'd like to explain in more detail, but to summarize…" Her calm voice sounded from inside the car, and after a pause, she came out, turning toward him and taking off her sunglasses, revealing black irises and eyes with Asian features. "You're not the only one."
Saying that, she quietly and calmly went back inside the car as if she hadn't just said something completely insane.
"I'm not… the only one?" Jonathan muttered faintly, his mind racing to process those words, trying to find some other meaning, but he understood very well what she meant.
'There are other reincarnated people!?' In the end, that was the most obvious conclusion—she definitely didn't mean anything else.
"Holy shit." Taking a deep breath, he exhaled while pinching the bridge of his nose.
There was no reason for him to be that shocked—well, he believed he was the only one simply because that was the "predictable" thing, but there wasn't any real reason for it. It's not like he was the protagonist of some novel or anything.
Already recovering from the not-so-shocking revelation if he thought about it logically, he raised his eyes to keep questioning her but stopped at the sight he got.
Since she was leaning over and her lower half was still outside, he got a very clear view of her ass in those tight pants. He hadn't noticed it before, but with her literally swaying from side to side while doing who-knows-what inside the car, he ended up getting distracted this time.
"Hgn~"
'…Okay, that was weird, but I'll pretend I didn't hear it.' Ignoring that moan—which he chose to believe was from effort—while staring at her ass impassively, he tilted his head and crossed his arms, regaining his calm face. "You meant there are other reincarnated people?"
"Hgn, sigh… exactly." She said after getting out of the car, putting something she had taken from her pocket away, then turning and walking toward him.
Seeing that, he took a few cautious steps back, but she simply ignored him and approached the body of the woman lying on the ground.
"I see, that means you protect them too, right? Why? Are we being hunted or something? For what reason, and why have I never been found before? Have you been protecting me all this time?"
"Yes, because your existence represents a threat. The second answer already explains the next two, and for your last question—not exactly." Crouching near the muscular woman's body, she started to search it as if looking for something.
"What do you mean?" He asked while watching the unknown Asian woman possibly rob a corpse.
"Although we were definitely protecting you all, it wasn't that necessary, because you were already doing it yourselves." She said as she took something from the woman's pocket and kept it, then turned her face up again.
"What are you—what are you going to do?" Changing the question midway, Jonathan raised an eyebrow as he saw her pull out a syringe-like weapon from who-knows-where.
"Extract." Without giving further explanation, she stuck the needle into the woman's neck and pulled the trigger. Soon, a pale liquid began to fill the glass container.
After a second, when the container was full, she pulled the needle out of the woman's neck, gave the weapon a light tap with a satisfied look, and stored it away before standing up.
"Anyway, I know you have a lot of questions and doubts, but like I said, this isn't the time or place, so I ask that you be patient. You'll eventually get your answers—for now, just go home." She said calmly while walking toward him.
Jonathan immediately grew alarmed at that. "Why are you coming closer?" He asked, taking a step back.
"No need to worry. I'm on your side, and you already know that if I wanted to hurt you, there's nothing you could do to stop me." She stopped a few steps away from him.
He stared at her in silence, the only thing he could see in her eyes being calmness. In the end, he relaxed, letting out a sigh, knowing her logic was undeniable.
"Good." She said with a faint smile, finally reaching him and, without saying another word, took a smaller syringe from a pocket in her pants filled with a light pink liquid.
Instinctively tensing his muscles, Jonathan asked while looking suspiciously at the syringe. "What are you going to do?"
"You can't go home with those bruises, can you? How would you explain that to Rachel?" She asked calmly, raising an eyebrow.
Not reacting to her mentioning Rachel, he shifted his gaze from the syringe to her, asking doubtfully, "And what's that syringe supposed to do? Heal me?"
"Exactly." She nodded lightly.
He blinked in surprise. "Wait, seriously?"
"Yes. May I?" She extended her hand toward him.
Suppressing his constant distrust telling him to run, he calmly raised his arm to her.
She then grabbed his forearm, turning it, and without ceremony, pierced the vein in his artery.
His brow furrowed for just a moment at the pain before he felt a cold sensation while watching that strange pink liquid enter his arm.
The feeling traveled through his arm up to his chest before quickly spreading throughout his whole body.
When she pulled the syringe out, Jonathan saw how a single drop of blood escaped the hole before it quickly sealed up. Not only that, the taste of blood from the cut on his lip vanished as the wound closed.
Looking down, he saw his abdomen, which had already started to bruise, quickly return to his normal skin tone, the faint pain in his nose and cheek also disappearing.
'What the hell is this? A healing potion or something?' Raising his arm, he looked curiously, running his hand over where the needle had pierced, finding nothing.
"This solves the problem of your injuries, but there's nothing I can do about your shirt—you'll have to make up an excuse for that, sorry." She said, putting the syringe away.
"Right…" Responding slowly, Jonathan looked around, his gaze moving from the muscular woman's body to the car in the background before focusing on the woman in front of him again. 'Haaa, I can already feel this is going to be a huge pain in the ass.'
She smiled as if she could read his mind. "I know how it looks, but I already explained it—now go, I'll clean things up here."
Nodding, Jonathan didn't waste time turning around, ready to run, but just as he took the first step, he stopped. "What was your name again?" He turned as he asked.
"It's Maya, Maya Kaneshiro. Nice to meet you, Jonathan. See you soon." She nodded slightly in farewell with a faint smile before going to the body on the ground.
With that, Jonathan immediately turned and ran full speed toward home.
...
"Haaa…" Exhaling as he sat on his bed, Jonathan rested his arms on his legs while staring at the floor with a neutral face.
He was thinking about what had happened a few hours earlier.
It was already past midnight, and he was about to go to sleep.
Getting home wasn't a problem—he simply opened the door and ran straight up to his room without giving Rachel time to see or talk to him, so he didn't have to explain the missing shirt.
Of course, she soon showed up in his room asking why he was in such a hurry, but then he used the excuse that he needed to use the bathroom.
And then there was also the fact that she obviously asked about Elizabeth, to which he had to explain what had happened at the party, which ended with Rachel scolding him for being stubborn and telling him not to do it again.
The conversation ended with him agreeing to everything while his mind was elsewhere.
After following his nightly routine as usual, he ended up here, in that posture and expression, his mind simply unable to relax after what had happened.
And it was totally understandable—his night hadn't just taken a completely different turn, but the revelation would very likely affect his life for, well, the rest of it.
"Haaa… I just hope whatever this plot is, I don't get too screwed over." Exhaling again, he slowly rubbed his face.
Indeed, to him, this situation felt like some damn story plot considering his status as a reincarnated person. He just hoped he wasn't some disposable character in this story—and if he was a protagonist, well, he hoped he wasn't like Guts.
"…For now, all I can do is wait." Literally, that was the only thing he could do at that moment.
He didn't have any information or anything that could help him understand or even research to understand—it was all just a waiting game.
With that said, he turned off the bedroom light and lay down on his bed, his mind still thinking about it against his will until he fell asleep.