"Bang!"
The impact sent Suzuki Sakamoto flying.
Fatigue washed over him, his consciousness blurred, and before pain could even form, darkness swallowed him.
---
"Hmph… inhale, exhale… inhale, exhale."
With a harsh gasp, Suzuki jolted upright. His breath came fast and uneven.
Am I dead?
The question echoed in his mind as the fog gradually lifted. His senses sharpened, and the answer became clear. He was alive. Fully awake. Aware.
He looked around. A dark gray blanket covered him. His body felt no pain, only a dull exhaustion.
No. What he remembered was not a dream.
He had been walking down the road. A dump truck barreled toward him. The crash. The sensation of being thrown into the air. The darkness that followed.
That could not have been a dream. It had been too vivid, too real.
And even if it somehow was, he should not be here.
He was inside a tent. A lamp hung overhead. The casing looked like an old oil lamp, but the light inside was clearly electric.
If nothing had been a dream, then he should be at home.
If the truck had really hit him, he should be in a hospital.
Yet he was in a tent.
That left him with two impossible possibilities: he had died and entered some world beyond death, or he had transmigrated.
Both were absurd, yet he had read too many stories of this kind to ignore the thought.
Suzuki reached out, wanting to examine his body—
"You're awake."
A mature voice broke the silence.
Suzuki turned quickly. Someone had been sitting beside him the entire time. He had not noticed, whether because they had stayed quiet or because he was still too disoriented.
The man appeared to be in his thirties or forties. His skin was slightly tanned, his appearance rugged, with half-shaved stubble covering his chin. He wore a thin white tank top and sat casually cross-legged.
A bulky old laptop rested in front of him. He held a razor in one hand, brown eyes observing Suzuki with calm sharpness. He flicked a small mirror aside but continued shaving without pause.
"Are you alright?" he asked.
Suzuki, still trying to regain his composure, nodded.
But his gaze drifted toward the mirror. Even at an angle, he could see most of his face reflected.
His breath froze.
The face in the mirror was not his.
Not one he recognized.
A stranger.
A shock ran through him. His hand instinctively rose to his face. His pulse quickened. Anyone would be terrified upon seeing an unfamiliar face staring back at them.
His expression shifted without his control.
"What's wrong? Do you need more time to rest?"
The man's voice pulled Suzuki out of his panic.
He tried to steady himself and replied, his complexion pale, his voice unsteady.
"Sorry. I just feel strange. Everything is still a bit hazy."
The man nodded. At some point, he had finished shaving and tossed the razor aside.
"It's normal," he said calmly. "When I found you at the bottom of that cliff, you were covered in blood."
He pointed toward a corner of the tent.
There, beneath the light, lay a pile of clothes—torn, stained with dried blood, streaked with grass and mud.
Suzuki placed a hand on his body again.
It was not his body. He confirmed it once more.
And yet, there were no wounds. No pain. Nothing that matched clothing soaked in blood.
Not my blood?
Did transmigration heal everything?
Or did this man treat the injuries?
Can recovery really be this fast?
Then again, if transmigration was possible, miraculous healing did not sound impossible.
Still, something felt off.
The tent and the items in it looked similar to those of his original world, though slightly more old-fashioned.
Not to mention, the man in front of him had distinctly Asian features.
Of course, it was also possible that he was simply someone with retro tastes.
A strange environment, a situation resembling transmigration, and waking up in a body that wasn't his…
All of it pushed Suzuki Sakamoto's alertness to the limit. His mind raced nonstop.
Some thoughts were useful.
Most were useless.
Combined with the emotional shock, he probably looked, from the outside, as if he were still half-dazed. His expression shifted constantly, and his responses were slow.
The man seemed to notice this and did not rush him this time. Instead, he simply observed Suzuki quietly.
As if reading his thoughts, he suddenly spoke.
"It looked dangerous, but you didn't have any wounds. You just passed out."
"Ah… really? That's… good."
Suzuki struggled to form a reply.
He still had no idea where he was, whose body this was, or even what his name was supposed to be now.
And sitting beside him was a complete stranger who had apparently saved him.
He didn't know how to even start a conversation.
"By the way, what's your name?" the man asked abruptly.
The question made Suzuki freeze.
He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
The man seemed to recognize the difficulty and continued.
"Oh, right. These were on you—your identification and wallet. You've been unconscious for two days, so you must be hungry. Want something to eat?"
Suzuki accepted the items, nodding with a weak, strained smile.
"I don't have much strength… my head's spinning from hunger."
"Haha, figured as much. But since you've been out for two days, you can only have porridge for now. Not because I'm stingy, haha."
The man stood, laughing heartily. Despite his rugged appearance, there was an easygoing air about him.
Now that Suzuki had a moment to look closely, he noticed the man's physique. Well-proportioned. Not small, not bulky. The muscle lines on his arms and shoulders were defined yet not exaggerated.
His overall presence gave a strong sense of balance and steadiness.
And now that he looked more carefully, Suzuki realized how disheveled the man appeared. Without the recent shave, he would have looked even more rough and unkempt.
He wore work pants and thick-soled Martin boots. With one motion, he lifted the tent flap and stepped outside.
Once the man left, Suzuki finally let out a slow breath.
He opened the identification pouch at once.
What kind of writing is this?
The strange script stunned him.
The characters were made of circles, strokes, and simple geometric lines formed from small black dots in different patterns. The overall impression resembled symbolic icons more than any real writing system.
He could not read any of it.
But as he stared, a strange sensation spread through his mind.
It was as if meaning seeped into him from the symbols themselves. His thoughts sharpened. Fragments of memory flickered through his head.
Kevin.
Kevin Carpenberg.
That was the name this body belonged to.
As his emotions settled, he realized just how odd he must have seemed earlier.
But given his circumstances, such behavior was probably unavoidable.
Still… something about the fragments in his mind felt wrong.
…
"His behavior just now… was abnormal to an extreme degree."
The man squatted beside a small stove outside the tent, staring at a small pot of bubbling rice porridge. A lit cigarette rested between his fingers.
He watched the flames flickering beneath the pot.
His mind replayed every moment from the tent—the moment "Kevin" had awakened, everything that followed.
All of it was wrong. Far too wrong.
So what exactly was he?
"I personally killed him."