That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Samurai — Volume 6: That Time I Was Finally Just Me
(Or: Every Story Deserves a Quiet Ending)
1 — The Sound of Ordinary Days
There's a kind of silence that only happens after the world's been saved too many times.
Not the tense, cinematic kind. The honest kind.
Birds. Wind. Distant laughter. No sound effects required.
That's what my life became.
No quests. No patches. No glowing sky.
Just mornings in Hanamori — the same village where I once fought a demon boar, and later taught a truck the concept of guilt.
Now, it's just me and the fields.
I fix roofs. Mend sandals. Brew terrible tea.
Sometimes kids ask if the stories are true — about the sword that glowed and the sky that cracked open.
I tell them no.
Better that way.
The world doesn't need heroes anymore. Just farmers, carpenters, and people who remember to be kind.
At night, I sit on the bridge and watch the river.
It still hums faintly — like code.
Like the memory of a world that once thought it was a game.
2 — The Shrine of Forgotten Versions
It's strange, walking past places that used to glitch.
The old shrine, once filled with ghosts of half-rendered data, now blooms with wildflowers.
Someone carved my name there, long ago, into the back of a wooden tablet.
Kenji Sato — Patch of the World.
I run my fingers over the letters and think about everyone I used to be.
The broom-swinging fool.
The beta protagonist.
The one who tripped into destiny.
The one who made friends with a truck.
Maybe they're all still here, buried in the world's memory like layers of code no one bothers to delete.
"Thank you," I whisper, not sure to whom.
Maybe to all of them.
Maybe to myself.
3 — Takeda's Visit
One morning, Takeda shows up again — hair gone white, eyes sharper than ever.
He watches me hammer a roof beam into place and says, "So this is what peace looks like?"
"Pretty much," I reply. "Don't tell anyone. They'll ruin it with plot."
He laughs. "You still deflect with jokes."
"And you still show up whenever the author forgets I need emotional closure."
He smirks. "Old habits."
We share tea under the maple tree. The silence between us feels earned.
After a while, he asks, "Do you ever miss it?"
"What, the chaos? The neon boars and existential updates?"
He nods.
"Sometimes," I admit. "But that was a story. This is life."
He looks toward the horizon, where the fields glow in afternoon gold.
"Then maybe you've finally reached your ending."
"Maybe," I say. "Or maybe I just stopped needing one."
4 — The Last Glitch
That night, the stars shimmer oddly.
Not a system error — just… familiarity.
A ripple, faint and harmless, dances across the surface of the stream.
In it, I see flashes — fragments.
The other me.
The one with glowing hair.
The cybernetic one.
The janitor.
The samurai.
The wanderer.
All standing side by side, smiling faintly.
No words. Just quiet understanding.
Then the image fades.
I exhale.
"Guess that's the backup drive saying goodbye."
5 — The Journey Home
Spring passes. Then summer.
By autumn, my hair's gone gray.
I leave my house one morning without much thought — no reason, no mission.
Just following the road that used to lead everywhere.
Past the rice fields, past the ruins of the old data fortress, past the shrine of erased worlds.
Until I reach the hill where I buried him.
Truck-kun's grave is overgrown now.
Someone's tied a rope of flowers around the stone. Kids, probably.
They leave offerings — toy wagons, tiny wooden wheels.
I sit beside it.
"You did good, you know," I say softly. "Eventually."
The breeze answers.
Somewhere far off, a faint echo — half wind, half memory — honks once.
I laugh. "Still watching, huh?"
6 — Epilogue: That Time I Was Finally Just Me
Years later, they'll tell stories about me again.
About the man who saved worlds, fought demons, taught a truck manners.
Most won't believe them.
That's fine.
Because I know the truth — that after all the respawns, resets, and rewrites, I finally became something the code couldn't predict.
Human.
No destiny. No glowing UI. No cosmic quest.
Just a man who lived long enough to understand what that meant.
When I close my eyes for the last time, I expect white light.
But it doesn't come.
Just the warmth of sunlight through paper walls.
The smell of tea.
And the faint, distant sound of wheels on a road.
Rolling gently away.
End of Volume 6: That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Samurai — That Time I Was Finally Just Me
(Or: Every Story Deserves a Quiet Ending)