Chapter Two – The Realization
By the end of his fifth birthday, the boy had reached a conclusion: he had not just woken up with strange memories — he had been reborn entirely. From the womb itself, his soul had carried over. But the reason those memories returned only now was clear enough to him: a child's brain before five simply couldn't hold the weight of another lifetime.
Yet this rebirth was not without gifts. His mind was sharp, clearer than it had ever been in his first life. He noticed things faster, remembered details effortlessly. Colors seemed brighter, words easier to absorb. His memory worked like a camera — photographic, precise. He could recall whole passages of books he had read, conversations he had overheard, even the rebirth scenarios he used to create on ChatGPT during long nights in India.
Those scenarios came rushing back now: him sitting in his small room, typing into a glowing screen, designing worlds where he became rich with little effort — buying stocks, predicting winners, living hassle-free. He had laughed at them then, treating them like games. But now? Now those "games" were a blueprint for reality.
Still, beneath the excitement, there was pain. He missed his parents from his first life. He often wondered: if they could see him now — not as their grown son, but as a five-year-old boy in another family, another country — how would they react? Would they even recognize him? Or would they simply grieve, never knowing he lived on elsewhere? The thought sat heavy in his chest, an ache that even his new parents' warmth couldn't erase.
But this ache was tempered by another truth: he was not just reborn anywhere. He was reborn into a Jewish family in 1975 America. Both his mother and father were Jews — and from the books, articles, and stories he had devoured in his first life, he knew what that meant. Jews held immense influence in Hollywood, where his father worked at Universal Studios, and in Wall Street, where the tides of global finance shifted with every decision.
For someone who had read rebirth novels from Hong Kong to China, Japan to America, this realization almost felt like a fantasy cliché. In his past life, he had devoured them all — the stories of men who woke up in the past, seized power, built empires, rewrote destiny. He hadn't just liked them. He had loved them, lived in them. And now, life had handed him the very stage those protagonists once walked.
He closed his eyes that night, lying in the comfort of his soft new bed, and whispered into the dark:
"This is real. This is my rebirth story. And this time… I'll make it count."