Chapter 2: Awakening
Pain.
That was the first sensation—not the soul-deep agony of the void, but physical, mundane pain. Hunger gnawed at his stomach like a living thing. Cold bit at his exposed skin. His head throbbed with a dull, persistent ache. His throat felt like sandpaper.
I'm... alive?
Yamada's eyes snapped open.
Gray sky loomed overhead, heavy with the promise of rain. Stone buildings pressed close on either side—architecture he didn't recognize. European, maybe? But old. Medieval old. Cobblestone pressed against his back, rough and cold. The smell of garbage and human waste assaulted his nostrils, making him gag.
He tried to sit up and nearly collapsed. His body felt wrong. Too small. Too light. Too weak.
What happened to me?
His hands came up reflexively, and he froze.
These weren't his hands.
Small, dirty fingers—child-sized. Scratched and calloused palms that had seen hard labor. Thin arms where he could see every bone under skin stretched too tight. He looked down at himself and his breath caught.
Ragged clothes that barely qualified as clothing—more like scraps of fabric held together by hope and filth. A body that couldn't be older than six or seven years. Ribs visible through torn shirt. Legs like twigs.
This isn't my body.
Panic clawed at his chest. Yamada scrambled to his feet, swaying dangerously. His vision swam. How long had this body gone without food? Without water? He pressed a hand against the wall to steady himself.
I died. I know I died. The car, the impact, the blood... that was real. So how am I—
Memories crashed through his mind like breaking waves. Two sets of memories, overlapping and contradicting.
Yamada Kenji, forty-two, dying on a Tokyo street.
And—
A child. No name. No parents. Sleeping in alleys. Stealing scraps. Running from adults who looked at him with either pity or disgust. Cold nights. Hunger. Always hunger. A life measured in moments of survival between long stretches of suffering.
I... I reincarnated?
The word felt absurd thinking it, like something from the light novels he used to read on the train. But the evidence was undeniable. He had died as Yamada Kenji and somehow, impossibly, awakened in this child's body.
But where? When?
He stumbled toward the alley's opening, legs threatening to give out with each step. The main street beyond was busy with people, but none of them looked his way. He was just another street urchin—invisible, beneath notice.
The architecture screamed early 20th century. The clothing styles confirmed it—1920s? 1930s? Somewhere in that range. Women in long dresses. Men in suits and hats. A few automobiles mixed with horse-drawn carts. The signs were in... German? No, not quite. Swiss German, maybe?
Europe. Early 1900s. And I'm a homeless child.
The absurdity of it would have made him laugh if he had the strength. Reincarnation was supposed to be a power fantasy—some god giving you cheat abilities and sending you off to become a hero. This was just... cruel.
I asked for another chance. I guess someone listened.
He leaned against the alley wall, trying to think. His stomach cramped painfully. This body was starving. Dying slowly. Without intervention, he had maybe a week before—
Footsteps echoed in the alley behind him.
Every muscle in Yamada's body tensed. The child's instincts screamed danger, and his adult mind agreed. He turned slowly, pressing his back against the wall.
A man stood at the alley's entrance, silhouetted against the gray light of the overcast day.
Tall—at least from a six-year-old's perspective. Long coat, dark and well-maintained. A hat casting shadows across sharp features. As the man stepped forward into the alley proper, details resolved themselves.
Middle-aged, maybe fifties. Graying hair cut short. Sharp eyes that missed nothing—the kind of eyes that dissected everything they saw. A face that might have been handsome once but had been worn down by obsession and single-minded purpose. There was something clinical about him, like a scientist examining a specimen.
Those eyes swept over Yamada—over this child's body—and something flickered in their depths. Recognition? Interest? Whatever it was made Yamada's skin crawl.
Danger. This man is dangerous.
The child's instincts were screaming at him to run, but his legs were already trembling. He'd barely made it to standing. Running was impossible.
The man approached slowly, deliberately, as if approaching a skittish animal. His gaze never left Yamada, studying him with an intensity that felt invasive. It was like being examined under a microscope—laid bare and found wanting.
"Interesting," the man murmured in Japanese—which answered the question of where they were, or at least who this man was.
He stopped about three meters away and tilted his head. His eyes seemed to look through Yamada, seeing something beyond flesh and bone. "Very interesting indeed."
The man reached into his coat and pulled out a small device—copper and brass, covered in engravings that hurt to look at. He held it up, pointing it at Yamada like a dowsing rod.
The device began to glow.
"Remarkable," the man breathed. "Your Magic Circuits... undeveloped, untrained, but the potential..." He leaned closer, and Yamada caught a whiff of tobacco and something chemical—formaldehyde? "And something else. Something I've never encountered before. A foreign element in your Od. Almost like..."
He trailed off, studying the device with furrowed brows. Then his eyes snapped back to Yamada, and a thin smile crossed his face. It didn't reach his eyes.
Run. I need to run right now.
But his legs wouldn't obey. Hunger and exhaustion had him rooted to the spot.
The man straightened, pocketing the device. He adjusted his hat and regarded Yamada with the cool appraisal of someone evaluating a tool's usefulness.
"Tell me, boy," he said in that clinical tone. "Do you have a family? Parents? Anyone who would miss you?"
Yamada's throat was dry as sand. He tried to speak but only managed a weak croak.
The man's smile widened fractionally. "I see. An orphan then. How... convenient."
He took another step forward. Yamada pressed harder against the wall, wishing he could phase through it.
"I have a proposition for you," the man continued, speaking slowly as if to a particularly dim child. "You're currently starving in an alley, yes? No food. No shelter. Winter is approaching. In your current state, you'll be dead within a month—two if you're remarkably lucky and resourceful."
Each word was a statement of fact, delivered without emotion or sympathy. Just observation.
"However," the man said, extending a hand toward Yamada, "I can offer you an alternative. Food. Shelter. Education. A purpose beyond mere survival. In exchange..."
He paused, studying Yamada's reaction with those sharp, calculating eyes.
"In exchange, you would become my apprentice. My ward. You would submit to my instruction and assist in my research. It would not be an easy life, but it would be a life. More than you have now."
This is a trap. Everything about this screams trap.
Yamada's adult mind ran through scenarios. A strange man offering to take in an orphan in exchange for "research assistance"? Every alarm bell was ringing. This was how children disappeared. How bodies ended up in rivers.
But...
He looked down at his skeletal arms. Felt the gnawing hunger in his belly. Recognized the weakness in his legs that wouldn't let him run even if he tried.
He's right. I'm dying. This body is dying.
"Who..." Yamada managed to croak out, his child's voice barely above a whisper. "Who are you?"
The man's expression didn't change, but something flickered in his eyes. Approval? He withdrew his extended hand and instead offered a slight bow—formal, precise, Japanese.
"My name is Norikata Emiya," he said. "I am a magus—a practitioner of the magecraft arts. I come from a long line of researchers seeking to reach the Root of all things. And you, child, may prove useful to that end."
Emiya.
The name hit Yamada like a physical blow.
Emiya. As in Emiya Kiritsugu? Emiya Shirou?
His mind raced back through hundreds of hours of anime watched, light novels read, wiki articles browsed in the depths of lonely nights.
Fate/Stay Night. Fate/Zero. The Nasuverse.
The realization crashed through him with terrible certainty. The architecture, the time period, the mention of magecraft and the Root—he was in the world of Type-Moon's Fate series.
And this man before him was Norikata Emiya. Kiritsugu's father. The magus who experimented on vampires and sought to manipulate time itself. The man who would create the Time Alter magecraft. The man whose research would eventually force his own son to kill him.
I'm looking at a monster wearing human skin.
Yamada's blood ran cold. Every instinct screamed at him to refuse, to run, to do anything but accept this devil's bargain.
But those same instincts were screaming about the hunger in his belly and the weakness in his limbs and the cold wind cutting through his ragged clothes.
What do I do?
He thought of the little girl in the yellow dress. Her smile as she clutched that red ball. The weight of being needed, even for just a moment. The feeling of mattering for the first time in forty-two years.
If I die here, in this alley, I save no one. I protect no one. That second chance I asked for was for nothing.
But if I survive... if I can navigate this nightmare... maybe I can do something. Change something. Save someone.
I have knowledge. I know what happens in this world—roughly. I know about the Holy Grail Wars. I know about Kiritsugu's fate. If I'm careful, if I'm smart... maybe I can make a difference.
"I..." Yamada started, then stopped. His voice was too weak, too uncertain.
Norikata waited patiently, hand clasped behind his back now. His expression was neutral, but those eyes never stopped analyzing.
What do I say? How do I navigate this?
Then a thought struck him—something from the child's fragmented memories. The barely-there identity of this body he inhabited.
"I need..." Yamada said slowly, forcing the words past cracked lips. "Before anything else... I need a name."
Norikata's eyebrow raised slightly. "A name?"
"A real one," Yamada continued, finding strength in the conviction. "Not just... 'boy' or 'child.' If I'm to have a home, be someone's apprentice... I should have a name. Don't you think?"
It was a gamble. A way to buy time, to assert some agency in this situation where he had none. But more than that, it was a truth.
Yamada Kenji was dead, buried on a Tokyo street in another world. That man had lived forty-two years of loneliness and died with one moment of meaning. This was a second chance—a new life in a new world.
He needed a new name to go with it.
Norikata considered this for a long moment. Then, unexpectedly, he nodded slowly.
"Logical," the magus said, and there was a hint of approval in his voice. "A tool is more effective when it has proper designation. Very well. What name do you choose for yourself?"
Yamada closed his eyes, ignoring the way his vision swam from exhaustion.
If I could have one more chance... I'd want to protect more smiles like hers. Be someone's hero. Be someone's father.
He opened his eyes and met Norikata's gaze as steadily as his weakened state allowed.
"Rikuya," he said. The name felt right on his tongue. "Rikuya Amamiya."
Amamiya—"heavenly palace." A name that reaches upward, toward something better.
Rikuya—"land of reason." A reminder to stay sane and logical in whatever hell is coming.
"Rikuya Amamiya," Norikata repeated, testing the syllables. He pronounced each one carefully, precisely. Then he nodded once, decisively. "Acceptable. A strong name. Traditional. It suits you."
He extended his hand again, and this time there was something almost ceremonial about the gesture.
"Now then, Rikuya Amamiya, I will ask you once more, and only once more. Will you become my apprentice? Will you enter my household, submit to my instruction, and assist in my research into the Root of All Things?"
This is it. The point of no return.
Rikuya looked at the offered hand—long fingers, surgeon-precise, belonging to a man who saw people as components in an experiment. A man who would eventually die by his own son's hand. A man who represented everything dangerous about the moonlit world of magi.
Then he looked down at his own small, dirty hand. The hand of a child who would die in this alley if he refused. The hand of someone who had been given an impossible second chance.
I'll regret this. I know I will. But regret is better than dying before I've even tried.
And maybe... maybe I can change something. Save Kiritsugu from becoming a broken machine. Stop the experiments before they go too far. Do something—anything—with this second chance.
Rikuya reached out with his small, trembling hand and grasped Norikata's.
"Yes," he said quietly, but with as much firmness as he could muster. "I'll become your apprentice. I'll become your son, if that's what you're offering."
The word 'son' seemed to give Norikata pause for just a fraction of a second. Then his smile widened—still not reaching his eyes, but present nonetheless.
"Excellent," Norikata said, and his grip tightened around Rikuya's hand. Not painful, but firm. Possessive. "Come then, Rikuya Amamiya. We have much to do, and a long journey ahead of us."
He pulled Rikuya toward the street, toward whatever fate awaited.
As they walked, Rikuya's legs threatening to give out with each step, he noticed something strange. A warmth in his chest that had nothing to do with the physical world. A presence settling into his soul, quiet and dormant but there.
What is that?
He had no answer. Only the certainty that something had changed fundamentally when that light struck him in the void. Something that slept now, waiting for the right moment to wake.
But for now, survival was all that mattered.
Norikata led him through the streets toward a more affluent district. People gave them a wide berth—the well-dressed magus and the filthy child at his side made an odd pair.
"First," Norikata said without looking back, "we will get you cleaned and fed. Can't have my new apprentice collapsing from malnutrition. Then we'll arrange transport to the island. My estate is... remote. Suitable for research that requires privacy."
"Island?" Rikuya managed to ask.
"Alimango Island," Norikata replied. "In the Philippines. Far from the prying eyes of the Mage's Association. You'll find it... educational."
The way he said 'educational' sent chills down Rikuya's spine.
I've made a deal with the devil. Now I just have to survive long enough to do something meaningful with it.
Behind them, in the shadows of the alley they'd left, something shimmered in the air for just a moment—invisible to mundane eyes. A golden thread, thin as spider silk, stretching forward into an uncertain future.
The thread pulsed once, like a heartbeat, and then faded from sight.