I was living on borrowed time.
No, I had been.
My body was so weak that I spent more time in the hospital than at home.
The doctors, rattling off disease names I'd never even heard of, had basically given up on treating me.
Was that why? My parents, who never seemed all that interested in me to begin with, stopped coming to see me at some point.
Had they just wiped a soon-to-die kid from their minds? And yet, they kept paying the hospital bills right on time.
That was something to be grateful for, at least.
Thanks to them, even with my life down to its final stretch, I could spend it pretty freely.
Sure, it was a limited freedom—I couldn't even step outside the hospital.
I poured every last bit of that precious free time into devouring martial arts novels.
Day after day, I read them like a madman, skimping on sleep to imagine protagonists with freakish talents snagging insane ultimate techniques, smashing villains flat, and romancing gorgeous women.
Whenever fatigue finally got the better of me and I dozed off with a book still open in my lap, the same thought always hit me.
If I got to be reborn, I wanted to come back in a world like that.
A strong, healthy body, training in martial arts, adventuring far and wide.
I wanted to live that kind of life.
Did some god—real or not—actually hear my wish?
Not long after, I breathed my last in that short, doomed life—and woke up reincarnated in a martial arts world.
The day I turned five, the second I realized it, I whooped in excitement.
"Woo-hoo!!"
Now I could finally master peerless divine arts, zip around with lightness skills, unleash sword qi left and right, right?
"Lightness skills? What kinda nonsense is that?"
"Huh?"
"Sword qi? Sword beams? Pfft hahaha! You actually buy into that crap?"
"Hey, ease up. He's just a little kid, isn't he?"
"...Huh?"
Th-this isn't right?
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