Chapter One: Starting from Zero!
『ＲＹＯＮ 』
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One chapter a day!
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The novel chapters are pre-written, so the writing style will improve starting from Chapter 9!
It was 3:00 AM, and a heavy silence wrapped around the city of Tokyo. But inside a small room in a dilapidated apartment, a storm was raging in the mind of a single young man.
"Haruto," a second-year high school student—or as he liked to call himself, an "Otaku Culture Enthusiast"—was staring at his phone screen with bloodshot eyes and dark circles that told tales of sleepless nights. The room around him was a museum of chaos: towers of instant ramen cups stacked like watchtowers, manga volumes scattered as if they were survivors of an earthquake, and socks... well, let's not talk about the socks.
"Is this the end? Seriously?!" Haruto shouted in a muffled voice to avoid waking the neighbors, tossing his phone onto the bed in frustration.
He had just finished reading the final chapter of the Demon Slayer manga. He expected an epic, a farewell worthy of the tears he had shed, but instead, he felt empty.
"Why? Why the rush?" he muttered, clutching his head. "If I were the author, I wouldn't have let things end so simply. Where is the character depth in the final moments? Where is the logic in the distribution of fates? Dammit, Tanjiro deserved better, and the Hashira... oh, my heart."
This complaining wasn't new to him. Haruto possessed a unique talent for feeling betrayed by the endings of great works. His mind began to scroll through his "List of Shame," as he called it.
"It's not just Demon Slayer... look at Attack on Titan!" Haruto stood up and began orating to the empty room as if before an audience. "That ending was a philosophical disaster! Do Japanese mangaka take some kind of drug that makes them forget how to write in the final quarter of the story? Is it burnout? Or do they just enjoy torturing us?"
He sighed deeply and slumped his frail body back onto the bed, staring at the cracked ceiling.
"At least those guys are better off than (Oda)... that man might let us die of old age before we see the One Piece treasure. Or maybe he'll pass away before the end, like the legend of Dragon Ball... Dammit, just thinking about it gives me acute depression."
Haruto felt his eyelids growing heavy. Grumbling consumes a lot of energy, especially for a lazy person who considers walking to the kitchen a strenuous journey.
"I'll sleep..." he murmured sleepily, pulling the crumb-filled blanket over his head. "Maybe in my dreams, I'll find an ending that satisfies me... Maybe in another world, stories don't disappoint..."
He closed his eyes, surrendering to sleep, unaware that this was the last time he would close his eyes as "Haruto." His next awakening wouldn't be to the sound of an annoying alarm, and it wouldn't be in Tokyo.
...
There was no sound of trucks, no distant rumble of trains. There was only the sound of... birds chirping? And the rustling of trees?
Haruto tried to open his eyes, but the light was painfully bright. More strangely, his body felt... different. It wasn't heavy and exhausted as usual. It was light, small, as if his limbs had shrunk.
"Did I sleep in the wrong position again? I feel like I've folded in on myself," he thought while trying to get up.
But when he tried to lift his hand to rub his eyes, he froze.
The hand that rose wasn't his rough hand accustomed to holding game controllers. It was a small, soft hand, slightly plump like a child's, with skin as white as milk.
"What... is this?"
The voice came out of his throat high-pitched, childish, and panicked.
Haruto—or what he had become—bolted up and began feeling his face, his hair, his body. He was wearing a simple, old Japanese robe (Kimono). The room he was in was not his. It was a spacious room with tatami-matted floors, filled with the scent of aged wood and incense.
He crawled—yes, crawled, because his legs felt too short to carry him with balance—toward a reflective object in the corner of the room. It was a carefully polished bronze mirror.
When he looked into it, time stopped.
There was no miserable high school student with messy hair.
Reflected in the mirror was a child... no, the word "child" didn't do him justice. He was a little angel who had accidentally fallen from heaven.
Hair as black as night flowed smoothly and silkily down to his small waist, and wide emerald-green eyes sparkled with intelligence and innocence at once. Thick lashes, and features so delicate they reached perfection.
"I... I'm handsome!" he screamed internally, his eyes scanning the reflection in sudden narcissistic shock. "I'm more handsome than any (Shoujo) protagonist I've seen in my life! Is this really me? Wait, did I die? Is this heaven? Or have I become a protagonist in one of those novels I used to read?"
He began pinching his cheeks hard. "Ow! That hurts! Okay, not a dream."
He tried to stand up and perform strange movements; he jumped, spun around, and even tried to sing his favorite anime opening to check his voice.
"A light shined in the middle of the city..." (Author: Whoever gets the hint, drop a 😂)
"My god, even my voice is cute!"
In the midst of his self-discovery chaos, the wooden sliding door (Shoji) opened quietly.
"Rin? Are you awake, sweetheart?"
A young woman entered, wearing a simple but elegant kimono, with features strikingly similar to his, especially the long black hair. But her eyes were a warm brown.
The woman smiled with a smile that melted the ice accumulated in Haruto's heart through years of loneliness.
"Happy birthday, my little hero. Today you have completed your fifth year."
Five years?
Suddenly, as if the phrase "five years" was a secret key, "Rin" felt a violent headache strike his head. He fell to his knees clutching his small head, letting out a cry of pain that terrified the woman.
"Rin! What's wrong?!" She rushed toward him and pulled him to her chest.
In that moment, the dams in his mind collapsed. Five years of memories lived in this world as a child merged violently with the memories of "Haruto," the high school student.
He knew his name now. Yukihara Rin.
He knew his mother, Yumi, the village's skilled and kind doctor who raised him alone after his father's death.
He knew his home, that small clinic in a remote rural village surrounded by mountains.
And he knew the most important person in his new world...
"Onii-chan!" (Older brother)
Another small voice came from the door. A little girl about three years old, with short hair and wide eyes, running recklessly toward them.
Sakura. His little sister.
The headache gradually faded, leaving Rin panting in his mother's arms, his mind now completely clear. He had regained full consciousness. He was reborn in another world.
He looked at his mother, who was anxiously wiping the sweat from his forehead, and at his sister, who was clutching the edge of his robe, her eyes tearful with fear for him.
In his previous life, he was an orphan. He grew up in a cold orphanage, where food was scarce and love was non-existent. He never knew what it meant for a mother to worry about you, or for a little sister to look at you as if you were her superhero.
He felt the warmth of his mother's hand on his cheek and the scent of medicinal herbs lingering in her clothes.
"I'm fine, Mom," Rin said, surprised by the sincerity of his feelings. "I'm really fine."
...
A whole week passed since that incident. A week Rin lived as if in a rosy dream.
Thanks to his adult memories, Rin was an uncannily perfect child. He no longer cried, didn't cause chaos, and helped his mother organize and dry herbs.
"You are so smart, Rin. Maybe you'll become a doctor like me one day," Yumi would say, stroking his long hair with pride.
He spent his days playing with Sakura. They ran through green fields, gathered flowers, and caught insects (though Rin hated insects in his previous life, he acted brave for his sister).
The village was quiet, primitive, and beautiful. The people were kind, the air was pure, and the food, despite its simplicity, was delicious because it was prepared with love.
"This life..." Rin thought as he sat on the porch at sunset, watching Sakura try to catch the tails of glowing fireflies. "This life is compensation. Compensation for all the misery I lived before. I'm handsome, I have a loving family, and I live in a place that looks like a Studio Ghibli background. What more could I ask for?"
He looked at his reflection in a small puddle of water by the house. The beauty he possessed was a lethal weapon. The village women gave him sweets for free just to see him smile.
"Heh, looks like my life as a peaceful (Slice of Life) protagonist has begun," Rin smiled confidently. "I'll grow up, become a wealthy, handsome doctor, and live a comfortable life to the end. No drama, no monsters, no bad endings."
But, it seemed fate was hiding a "plot twist" he didn't expect. And as any expert web novel reader knows, the calm is always the precursor to the storm.
As he was about to enter the house to sleep, he heard a sound.
Not a sound heard by the ear, but a strange ringing inside his skull.
Ding!
Rin froze in his tracks, his foot hanging in the air.
"That sound..." he whispered, his eyes widening. "Don't tell me..."
Before his eyes, in the empty air, blue neon lines began to form and connect, shaping a translucent rectangle floating in the air.
It was a User Interface. An interface he knew well from the thousands of novels he had read.
[System activated successfully.]
[Initializing host data...]
[Welcome, Player.]
Rin's heart pounded so hard he felt it in his throat.
"A system? I have a Player System?!" He almost danced with joy. "My god! This means I'll become strong! I'll be the strongest! Goodbye, village doctor life, and hello, legendary adventurer life!"
With quick wit and the enthusiasm of an otaku running through his veins, Rin uttered the usual voice command:
"Status!"
The text on the blue window shifted to show his character details.
Rin wiped his eyes quickly to read the lines, a grin spreading from ear to ear.
[Name: Yukihara Rin]
[Age: 5 years and 7 days] (The seven days are from the author's pocket... ahem)
[Race: Human]
[Level: 1]
[Current World: ........]
Rin's eyes stopped at the last line.
The words written next to "Current World" weren't "Generic Fantasy World" or "Land of Magic."
The words flashed in crimson red for a moment before settling.
[Current World: Demon Slayer (Kimetsu no Yaiba)]
The smile vanished.
The piece of candy in his hand fell to the ground.
The rosy color that decorated his cheeks disappeared, replaced by a deathly pallor.
"Demon... Slayer?"
He whispered it with a trembling voice, and the sound of his heartbeat turned from drums of joy to funeral bells.
He looked around in terror. The quiet village, the dark forest surrounding it, the pitch-black darkness wrapping the place without any electric lights.
Suddenly, the place didn't look like "Studio Ghibli" anymore. It looked like an open buffet, and the food was himself and all the villagers.
He turned to look inside the house, where his mother was laughing while tickling Sakura. The pure laughter, the warmth, the love...
In the world of Demon Slayer, these things are nothing but "Death Flags."
He remembered the stories of the Hashira. Tanjiro and his family. Tokito and his family. Sanemi and his family. Shinobu and her sister.
The common denominator among them all?
They were happy once. Then the demons came.
Rin felt a chill run down his spine. A terrifying image formed in his mind. A man with a white hat, an elegant Western suit, and red eyes radiating absolute evil.
Kibutsuji Muzan.
"No..."
Rin clenched his small fists until his knuckles turned white, and his emerald eyes, which were sparkling with innocence moments ago, now glowed with a look of rage, horror, and determination.
(Emerald = shiny green, roughly)
"I won't let this happen. To hell with the scenario. To hell with the author. This is my family now... and I won't let any demonic (Michael Jackson) touch a single hair of them!"
Little Rin stood before the desolate darkness of the forest, and instead of the fear that controlled him for a moment, a new feeling filled his heart. A feeling of greed for power.
"System... I want to become strong. Now."
[Desire accepted. Daily Quest path unlocked.]
And so, the days of laziness and sleep ended. And the journey of survival began.
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