My Mother always used to tell me that in every person's life, there would come a day when something inexplicably would happen.
"Sometimes my son" she would say, "things happen that are out of the ordinary. Things that cannot be understood with common sense". She especially liked to repeat that last phrase when she got into one of her numerous introspective moods.
I used to write her off, thinking that she was just being dramatic again.
I would be forgiven for thinking so. After all, my mother was the kind of person to enjoy watching paranormal activities videos all day long and was utterly convinced that the biblical giants were hidden away somewhere in Antarctica by the government. If she was to be believed, she once met a centaur while taking a vacation in Greece.
There was no doubt that I loved my mother. The same way any decent son loved the woman that carried them for nine months and then gave them the gift of life. However, that love did not blind me to the fact that she gave some very questionable advice sometimes. The door to my bedroom was permanently stained because she insisted on applying olive oil to it every night to "keep out bad spirits". I used to look down on her a bit for believing in the supernatural.
Despite having been raised a christian, I was an atheist.
Or at least that is what I used to be, turns out she was right and I was wrong. I was not sure which religion got it right in the end, but gods definitely did exist. Even in my old world. There was no other explanation for my current predicament.
Honestly, admitting that I was wrong, even if only to myself, put a bad taste in my mouth. Like I just lost some great personal battle.
It was perplexing. I never used to mind admitting when I was wrong back in my previous life.
This was just another out of many changes I had noticed in myself since waking up in this new and strange world.
Not wanting to go down another spiral, I did my best to ignore the frightening implications of my very being having been changed with my rebirth and give the head of the man I was currently sitting atop of another slap. There was no other reason for doing so other than that I thought it was funny.
I regained consciousness in this new world as a baby and, after a brief period of existential dread that stretched across several days spent in denial, I started mentally preparing myself for what was undoubtedly going to be the most agonizing couple years of my new life.
I had consumed enough media in my last life to have some inkling as to what I was in for. The main characters in those types of stories all unanimously agreed that the first few years in a Reincarnators life were the worst.
Turns out they were right.
It wasn't until my fourth year into my new career as a full time infant that I first heard my full name called out loud.
Ladora Buné
I honestly liked the sound of it. It rolled off the tongue pretty nicely. Apparently the orphanage staff found me a couple days before my soul took over this body in a basket placed in front of their doors. Put there by my deadbeat biological parents no doubt. The only thing they found within the casket was me and a piece of high quality parchment with the two words that made up my name written on it in extravagant calligraphy.
One thing of note was that they put my first name before my surname. That was not how things were done in Japan and as such I could only assume that my parents were a couple of foreigners.
They probably got busy without protection while on vacation and didn't want to deal with the consequences of their actions, me, messing up their lives. Of course I had no way of knowing if that was truly what happened, but it was the story I had chosen to go with over the years.
I was sure that the thought of being abandoned by their parents would have hurt a normal child and put a huge chip on their shoulder for the rest of their lives. I was not that child.
Truth be told, the situation really wasn't all too dissimilar to my first life. Fathers going off to get the milk was a cliche I was familiar with very intimately.
Only this time, my new mother decided nine months of carrying me around was enough for her so she followed my dad right out the door.
Giving credit where credit was due, at least they had the decency to give me a proper name before throwing me into the trenches of the Japanese orphanage system.
Most children that ended up in facilities like the one I called home now did not get the same courtesy. It was actually so common for children to end up at our doorsteps nameless that, while the first name was up to the discretion of whatever staff member that found them, every child would receive the same last name in Wakabe-en. Also called the young leaves garden .
The surname they were given was Yoshino, written with the kanji for "good luck" and "field". Apparently it was supposed to literally mean "field of good luck". Signifying that the children raised in this new home were going to be blessed with good fortune.
I was honestly a bit jealous when Ari, one of the youngest childcare providers working at Wakabe-en, took us in a circle and told us the meaning of the surname most of us children had been given. I got over that brief bout of jealousy quickly enough though.
Although I did not appreciate how it naturally singled me out from the crowd of other children living in the facility.
Being named after one of the Demon Lords of hell spoken off in King Solomon's Ars Goetia wasn't too bad. I would not deny that I felt a little unsettled at first. I was originally raised as a christian after all. But after going to sleep one day and then waking up as a baby in another world I truly could not be bothered to let myself obsess over such a small detail.
Besides, nobody else in the orphanage, nor later in school, seemed to overly react to my blasphemous surname. Christianity did not enjoy the same level of fame in Japan as it did in central Europe, so I should not have been surprised that the contents of the Ars Goetia were unknown to the vast majority of the people living on this island.
If I was forced to describe my childhood years in one word, then I would simply call them boring. I never blamed the little buggers too much for it, but as was to be expected, children my age did not make good conversation partners for a guy that was in his late teens mentally.
They were still cute and I did indulge them when the boredom of this new life became unbearable, but it was hard to call someone a friend when you were just so different from them. They were more like annoying little siblings to me than anything. Even the older kids treated me with the respect they usually only afforded the adults working as care takers.
Messing around with my fellow orphans and allowing the female staff members of Wakabe-en to spoil me rotten with attention were some of my guilty pleasures. Constantly being told that you're the "cutest little man" any of them had ever seen certainly felt pleasant enough to let them play with my hair and pinch my cheeks sometimes.
It's not like they were exaggerating either. Even in this new world, where the people seemed almost ridiculously attractive, I could tell that I would stand out once I was fully grown.
With silky green hair the shade emerald, that remained perfectly groomed no matter what I did, and shining red eyes the color of rubies, I knew that my popular phase was only just beginning!
Most of my days apart from that were consumed by a monotonous routine. I woke up, went to school, did the mandatory extracurricular activities after school that social norms demanded of me and then went home to do my chores, homework and later went to sleep.
It wasn't the most exciting life, but I was content with the knowledge that this state of affairs would not last forever. Or for that much longer really. After all, this wasn't just plain old regular early 2000s japan I had been reincarnated into.
No, far from it. I was reborn into plain old early 2000s, but anime.
How did I know? It was a simple deduction. The first clue was that everyone was much more attractive than they had any right to be. The proportions of some of the women I had seen in this life would've had people in my previous one lose their collective minds. However, that wasn't the most conclusive piece of evidence I had come across. No, that honor belonged to the hair.
Blue, blond, green, black. If you could name it, chances were somebody had hair with that colour growing out of their head.
The best example to showcase that fact was the blue haired teenager whose head I had been repeatedly smacking around for the last minute.
"How many times do I have to teach you this lesson you stupid yakuza wannabe punks?"
I lifted my head and looked around at the other two young men I had laid out previously with an exasperated expression. I was really starting to reach the end of my patience with these idiots.
By the looks of it, they couldn't have been older than their late teens, so I knew that some youthful foolishness was to be expected. However, they had long reached the limits of what I would deem reasonable.
What kind of person gets beaten up by a ten year old boy and then continues to try and attack that boy on a weekly basis for the next two years anyway?
I knew that this was an anime world and as such, comical situations and cliches like this were par for the course. And yet! This whole situation was getting too ridiculous for even my generous self to accept as real life.
I had been dealing with these three idiots for years now. Since I first managed to convince the orphanage staff to let me go running in the evenings.
Convincing them took a while I would admit, but also not too long. Being a child came with its own set of advantages after all, especially being a cute child. The general rate of attractiveness amongst the population being much higher than I was used to did not make pretty privilege any less real it would seem.
You just needed to be even prettier than the average pretty person to have it work out for you. Lucky for me, I had it on good authority that there was no child in this place prettier, or at least cuter, than me. My Charm was irresistible.
"This is getting ridiculous. Can you dumbasses just give me one week where I don't have to see your ugly faces? I do not need my own Team Rocket."
I looked at the trio of teenage boys lying motionless on the floor in front of me with no small amount of reproach.
"And worst of all, you are all just some guys! If I have to have a trio of creepy stalkers following me around every week, they could at the very least have the decency to look good while doing so! Only good looking people are allowed to be stalkers! Didn't you know?"
Punk Number One, who was still busy having his blue haired head pushed into the pavement, looked up at me in defiance from where I had him pinned under me, lying on his stomach.
"You Devil! Are you calling us ugly? You think we're a joke? We are the Baroga Gang! Me and my boys run these streets! I will never allow a smug little brat like you to roam our backyards without paying us the respect we are owed!"
Laid out on the floor around me, from where I had left them to deal with their leader, his two friends groaned out in agreement.
"Who are you calling a devil?" I asked, almost offended. "I will have you know that my looks would place me much closer to an angel than a devil" I shook my head and stopped myself before I could go on another vanity fueled rant.
I lived through the age of social media, where people had perfected the art of insulting and demeaning.
I shall not be ragebaited by these amateurs!
"Anyways, I've had enough of your nonsense for today. I am going home. You idiots better not show your face before me for the rest of the week or I will tell your parents that their delinquent sons have been skipping school"
With an exasperated sigh, I stood up and gave the Punk in Chief one last slap to the head. Feeling no small sense of amusement at how he had suddenly grown silent the moment I brought up his parents.
Without further delay, I exited the alley where our weekly show offs usually took place and began strolling home.
Truthfully, I was kind of thankful to them. Who knew how long it would have taken me to realise the strength that my body possessed if it wasn't for them.
Getting punched in the face as a ten year old by a guy significantly bigger than me seemed like a major crisis at the time. I wouldn't really say that I was particularly scared in any sense of the word, but I was sure that I was in for a good amount of pain.
I wasn't.
Once the fist connected, I barely felt a thing.
Emboldened by my perceived invincibility, I countered the hit with a gut punch. My small, tightly clenched fists immediately laid the taller boy out.
I truly never could have expected the years of shenanigans that single punch would bring down upon me. Of course, I still would have done it even if I had known. I was not sure why, but the mere thought of backing down from a fight and allowing myself to be beaten was so alien to me that I did not even see it as a viable option.
Supernatural strength and durability wasn't the only thing different with this body.
I was also fast as fuck.
Unfortunately, I did not know how fast exactly just yet, but I did know with certainty that I could easily outperform any olympic medalist and keep on accelerating without getting tired.
I haven't had the chance to really cut loose yet. With how heavily urbanized Tokyo was, it was hard to find a place to go all out in without having anyone catching me on camera performing what anyone would recognize as a clearly superhuman feat.
After all, I did not want to end up in some Gouvernement Facility, getting dissected by scientists to see what made me tick.
The mere idea of some humans treating me like an experiment they could cut apart for their own gain was so revolting to me. So much so that I had to forcefully take my mind off of the vile thought before I got angry again.
Anyways, I already knew that that was going to change in the future. At the risk of sounding presumptuous, I knew that there was a great Destiny out there waiting for me. There was simply no way that I had been brought into this world for no reason.
That's not how the reincarnation trope went.
I was completely certain that there was some hidden society of supernaturals, just waiting for a charming and capable young man like me to swoop in and fix all their problems.
Dark lords everywhere will hate to see me coming.
I earned myself some weird looks by the people passing by me on the sidewalk of the busy street. A lone preteen walking around the city, at a time when he should by all rights be at home, with a self satisfied and smug look on his face seemingly offended their sensibilities.
It took a good half hour until I arrived back home.
My good mood evaporated instantly.
Just like my body, my senses had similarly gotten an upgrade with my rebirth. My sense of smell especially had been cranked up to eleven.
This sensitive new nose of mine would never allow me to mistake the smell of blood.
The smell of blood that was coming from the one place I had called home for the last twelve years of my life.
I explode from my previously unhurried walk into a sprint.
I practically ripped open the gate to the front yard separating the street and the orphanage in my haste. With hurried steps, I threw myself over the meticulously maintained grass towards the building's main entrance.
Bargaining through the door in a way that would've had me scolded by the entire staff in any other situation, I ran past the hallway and turned corners until I arrived where the smell of blood was thickest.
Taking in the sight in front of me, I was struck silent.
It was like something out of a true crime episode. The lights were turned off and the room was utterly devoid of any sort of lighting. Of course, that posed absolutely no problem to me and my superior eyesight.
I saw the contents of the medium sized room as clearly as if it were day.
The floor was matted with blood. Carelessly littered across the living floor were torn apart corpses. My blood began to boil as I took them in. I knew these bodies, or at least, I used to.
I suspected that I would find something like this here. I did not know how exactly, but some part of me had known what would await me inside this room the moment the smell of blood reached my nose.
A great stillness overtook me as my eyes shifted from one body to the next.
The laughing faces of the cute little orphan children that used to follow me around, were distorted into expressions of fear and horror. Their eyes were empty and their mouths opened in silent screams of agony.
The orphanage staff that used to spoil me rotten, dotting on me relentlessly and always trying to pinch my cheek…had been brutalised to the point that they barely resembled human beings anymore.
In the middle of the room, holding a torn off arm in his hands like a stick of cotton candy, lurked a monster in human skin.
In any other situation, I might have called him handsome. In this one however, I was sure that I had never seen a more hideous sight before in my life.
His expression was warped into a look of perverse ecstasy as he took another bite out of the half eaten, childish limb.
Blood was smeared messily across his lower lip and his eyes were cloudy and unfocused. He seemed utterly absorbed in his current task and deaf to the world.
As if coming out of a trance, his eyes suddenly regained a spark of clarity and he looked at me in surprise.
That surprise quickly morphed into pure, unbridled joy as he swallowed the piece of human meat he had been chewing on.
"There you are". The monster smiled at me. His voice taking on a quality that could almost be mistaken for tenderness.
That illusion of care was immediately shattered after the beast took a deep and long sniff of the air separating us.
Shining red irises, surrounded by black sclera, looked at me as if I was the most beautiful thing he had ever laid his eyes upon.
The Ghoul took a moment to collect himself and then began to speak in an utterly deranged tone of voice.
"I have been waiting for you"