Chapter 1: The Day I Died
A boy with crimson hair and golden eyes stared at the mirror, glaring at his own reflection like he was looking at a stranger or maybe a lunatic.
"Okay… okay… what the hell is going on here?" he muttered, gripping the edge of the sink.
"Who am I? What am I?"
His voice echoed in the small bathroom, thin and unstable. The face in the mirror was young, unfamiliar, yet disturbingly vivid.
The crimson hair fell messily over his forehead, and those golden eyes… they didn't belong to the man he
remembered.
"I'm pretty sure," he said slowly, "that I was drinking on a rooftop."
Silence followed.
Then his breath hitched.
"…Oh."
Fragments rushed back into his mind—blurred city lights, the taste of cheap alcohol, laughter that didn't reach his heart, the cold wind on a rooftop at night.
"I remember now," he whispered. "I fell."
A pause.
"And I died."
If you're wondering who I am, let me introduce myself properly.
My name is Nero Crimsonflare.
Or rather… it used to be.
In my previous life, I was just an ordinary boy. When I was fifteen years old, my parents died in an accident. One moment they were there, the next they were gone.
No warning.
No last words.
Just a phone call that split my world in half.
I really don't like remembering that part.
After that, everything went downhill.
Depression wrapped itself around me like a chain. I stopped going to school.
I stopped meeting friends.
Days blurred together, meaningless and empty.
The only things that kept me distracted were third-rate
fantasy novels and alcohol.
I drank a lot.
How much? Honestly, I don't remember.
One night, drunk out of my mind, I climbed onto the rooftop of my apartment building.
I don't know if I wanted to feel free, or if I just didn't care anymore.
The wind was cold.
The city lights were distant.
And then… I slipped.
What a pathetic life story, right?
After that came a dream.
At least, I think it was a dream.
I saw my mother and father standing together, smiling gently like nothing bad had ever happened.
They didn't scold me.
They didn't cry.
They just told me one thing.
Don't waste your new life.
They said they left me a gift.
I tried not to cry.
I really tried.
But tears still streamed down my face, soaking the pillow of a bed I didn't recognize.
"I won't," I whispered into the darkness. "I promise. I won't waste it."
That was when it happened.
A sharp, unbearable pain stabbed straight into my head.
"AAAAA—!" I screamed, collapsing to my knees. "What the hell is this?!"
Memories flooded in—memories that weren't mine.
A different childhood.
A different house.
A different name.
I clutched my head as images overlapped, smashed together, and finally settled into place.
"…I see," I breathed.
I finally understood where I was.
This world.
This body.
This life.
I was inside a novel.
A fantasy novel I had read before.
Its name was Savior Story.
Yeah. Typical title.
The plot was as generic as they came.
A young prince loses his kingdom after an invasion by a powerful empire.
The king dies.
The empress and the prince barely escape.
A goddess appears, blesses the prince, and orders him to save humanit from the Abyss.
The prince's goals were clear and dramatic.
Reclaim his fallen kingdom.
Destroy the empire that ruined his life.
Save the world from the Abyss.
And his name?
Leon Sundawn.
The destined hero.
The center of the story.
The world's hope.
And me?
I wasn't the hero.
I wasn't even a side character.
I was an extra.
A nameless, insignificant background character who died in the early chapters while trying to save the hero during the academy entrance exam.
I let out a hollow laugh.
"…How pathetic."
To die once in my original world.
And then be reborn only to die again as a disposable extra?
No.
I clenched my fists, staring back at my reflection in the mirror.
"I'm not doing that," I said quietly.
I had already died once.
I wasn't going to die again.
Not for the hero.
Not for fate.
Not for some badly written plot.
If this world wanted me to be an extra—
Then I would become an extra who survived.