Chapter 2: Reincarnated Inside Of a Novel [1]
New Morning Arise with the glowing sun.
Sunny was sleeping in room, and suddenly the morning sunlight fell upon his face. As the sunlight started to disturb his eyes as he blinked, then he woke up the morning light.
The mattress sagged beneath him, pressing around his body as if convincing him to stay put. But the air in the room carried a crispness that felt suspiciously invigorating unlike his apartment.
That should have raised more questions than it did, but his brain was still waiting for the rest of him to clock in.
Knock. Knock.
The knock came again, polite and soft, drumming against his half-conscious thoughts.
'Ugh. Who knocks at this hour?'
The door creaked open before he could process anything further. Graceful footsteps followed.
And yet, he stayed wrapped in the blanket, its warmth betraying him with enough comfort. Then, fingers combed gently through his hair.
They were careful. The touch wasn't harsh, but there was a false familiarity in it, he felt the instinct to question it—rise and immediately fade, buried under sleep's gentle bribe.
"Wake up, sweetie," came the voice, melodic and dangerously kind.
"The world awaits, you sleepyhead."
Then, he realised that something was wrong.
'Huh!?'
He opened eyes with urgency and met the morning sunlight. He got a bit nervous then he cautiously looked around and when he turned his head, he noticed a woman
The woman was sitting next to him, right on the edge of the bed as he was confused and looked at the women.
As he observed, the woman's clothing was made of dark green wool, decorated with stitched vine patterns at the sleeve ends (cuffs) and the bottom edge (hem).
Her hair, dark and pinned, framed her face slightly. Her face bore the serene, beautiful expression that one might expect from a goddess in a children's book.
She was pretty, but the kind of pretty that made him think of flowers he knew better than to touch.
Sunny's brain, with admirable speed for this hour, immediately filed her under danger.
Women equal danger.
Especially the beautiful ones. It's not just a simple hunch but a well-established law of reality, confirmed through repeated and painful personal experience.
'Who?'
'No, why is there a woman in my room? No, wait. Where am I? This isn't my room.'
His body moved before thought could catch up, throwing itself instinctively toward the headboard.
"Ouch!"
A slight wince told him how real everything felt.
The woman blinked, her composure didn't crack. And it was immediately replaced by a smile that suggested she had seen this exact scenario a thousand times before.
"Oh my," she said, with a soft voice.
"Did you have a nightmare, dear?" Her gentle laughter followed.
'Dear? Huh? Don't dear me, who the hell are you?
His eyes swept across the room with cautious disorientation. Everything around him felt arranged—too neat to belong to his messy life.
'As I thought, this isn't my apartment.'
His unease deepened, confusion eating him up as he sat there in disbelief.
Where was he? Who was she? not knowing what to do so, he simply continued to observe and let the details float by without effort.
'Anyway, why does my body feel light?'
His weight and his proportions, none of it matched the person he remembered him being.
'And why weaker?'
Then, just as he opened his mouth to say something logical or accusatory—his voice betrayed him.
"Mom—"
The word slipped out before his mind could slap a hand over it. His smaller hand immediately lurched upward, pressing hard against his mouth.
'Why the hell did I say that!!??'
Even if he dug far enough through his dusty memories, Sunny didn't recognize a mother like her in his memories,her face doesn't match up. This woman's face… none of it belonged to any fragment of time he could claim.
Then he observed himself,he was stunned again and a question appeared in his mind.
'Wait, why do I look like a teenager?'
'What kind of sadistic dream is this!!?'
The woman's smile deepened as she brushed a strand of hair from his forehead again.
Sunny felt the unease stronger emotions now because whatever affection she offered, he felt it belonged to her care. And it managed to trick him into accepting reality!
Sunny felt the urgent want to push away her hand. But her next words stopped him from doing so—
"Anyway, if you're awake, enough to be surprised by your beautiful mother, I know you're certainly awake enough to get moving."
She stood as she spoke.
"Wash up now, Ethan and breakfast is getting cold, and you know how dramatic Layla becomes when she has to wait for you."
Then, she turned and left.
The door clicked shut after she left and closed the door, everything became quiet again.
The boy, whose name was Ethan (as she had called him), stayed quiet while he was lying in bed.
At first, he just expressed a little confusion, but now his face showed shock, like he couldn't believe what had just happened now...
'Ethan? Huh? Who is it? Who the hell is that? Where am I!?? Cause, this isn't even my blanket or the stiff pillow that I hate!'
His eyes moved again, scanning the room, trying to locate some kind of anchor, something familiar or stupid enough to make this entire dream sequence collapse.
The room looks simple like an old-fashion and everything is nearly arranged but none of it felt like he recognised.
Then he looks at the old wooden wardrobe standing in the corner with half-open and it shows neatly arranged clothes inside. The room seemed artificial, almost too perfect —like it was prepared for a play or a movie. It gave him the feeling of waking up inside a medieval film set rather than a real, lived-in room.
It was all painfully… like a fiction.
His jaw tensed. 'Am I inside a generic fantasy setting? No, did I die?'
A slow exhale escaped him.
"For real?" he murmured to himself, testing his voice, it sounded different.
'Nah, this can't be real.'
Smack!
Slapping his face, he realised that everything was fundamentally, intrinsically wrong. Buried in his chest, the sensation of mismatch deepened, like two puzzle pieces forced into union.
His thoughts, or what used to pass for thoughts, felt frayed at the edges.
Familiar memories began to reshape themselves into things he couldn't quite tell the difference between which one belonged to him and which had been borrowed.
Then, it came. Threaded itself in his head like it had always been there.
'Ethan… Castelor?'
The name didn't belong to him, he was almost certain of that, but the way it rang in his mind felt disturbingly true to him.
His lips parted. "Ethan," he said quietly, testing it like a foreign magic word.
"Ethan… Ethan."
The sound twisted the air around him, and worse, it twisted something inside him too.
That wasn't his name.
He knew that but then why, with every action like it has already happened with me many times, now it starts to sound more natural than his actual name? Why did it feel like the syllables had lived somewhere in him long before he ever spoke them aloud?
Panic began to creep in. His name was Sunny…. Sunny Nozomi…. Not Ethan for sure.
Then, the flood came. Memories surged through him with sharp, unpredictable rhythm. Flash after flash, images of unfamiliar people, buildings that didn't exist, voices that spoke his name like they had always known him.
His chest constricted as the blitz of two lives clashed inside his skull, fighting over space that wasn't built to contain both.
'Gah, damn it!'
Then, he sat perfectly still on the edge of the bed, for several minutes. After sometime his eyes shut, forcing his breathing to slow as he held onto the fragments of his real identity.
'Yeah, something is definitely wrong here... I don't feel really good.'
Eventually, the static quieted.
And then, the words Arcade Academy rose to the forefront of his mind. Some part of his soul had recognised the name long before his consciousness caught up.
'Where did I hear that weird-ass name before?'
'Wait, don't tell me that—!!'
He stumbled back, feet tangling in the edge of the mattress, nearly sending him crashing onto the wooden floor.
His head spiralling as his equilibrium faltered under the weight of a single, horrific truth...
Arcade Academy.
One of the top three magical institutions in the kingdom of Volunthia.
A nation that gave birth to heroes, scholars, tyrants, and monsters alike. The name alone carried respect, and fear across the entire continent. This world and that treacherous academy. And the storm of events that is about to unfold.
He knew them but they were not from this boy's memories… It was from--Sunny Nozomi's memories.
His real memories!
'DAMN IT!! H-how? How did I end up inside that damnable novel?!!'
[The Hero That Left The Academy]
He had read it, proofread it, actually—skimming through late-night chapters, begrudgingly enduring the protagonist's infuriatingly righteous ideals and the endless tragedies that piled up around him.
It had all been just fiction for him! Words on a screen and stories to pass the time.
The polished wood creaked under his bare feet as he shifted, grounding him in how real this all felt.
'Fuck! This is bad... No, it's even worse. No, no, no.'
He stood still, utterly still, as though movement might wake something worse. His name wasn't Sunny anymore, not in this world.
It was Ethan now.
Ethan Castelor.
His mind was racing to comprehend the weight pressing down on him. He was inside the damnable novel, and if the fragmented timeline in these foreign memories held any truth…
He exhaled and spoke:
"The 472nd Year of the Nexus Calendar. So it's late winter, just two weeks left before the start of Nexus 's first month, which is the equivalent of January in this world."
'And in two weeks, this body, this Ethan Castelor will enter Arcade Academy.'
His view lowered to the floor, but he wasn't seeing the worn planks. His thoughts had pulled far away.
"No, calm down. You're overreacting. This could still be a dream. Some twisted lucid nightmare your brain cooked up to punish you."
He clenched his jaw.
"However, if this is my reality now…"
'Then, I am fated to die.'
If the plot followed its course, death would come swiftly to anyone unlucky enough to be nothing more than a background figure in this world.
And judging from both of their memories, Ethan Castelor was one of the nameless extras who didn't get big, tragic deaths.
One that just stopped existing somewhere off-page, swept into the gutters of the story without so much as a paragraph.
He was extremely sure that the name didn't register in any of the written passages he had read or edited.
Then the sound of someone approaching his room could be heard ,then the sound fell still. He looked towards the doorway and saw a shadow stretched across the doorway, and when he looked up, she was there—his so-called mother—as she had a forced smile on her face.
Her eyes shone with a warmth that only made him more uneasy.
"Still in bed, Ethan?" She asked, her voice sweet.
"Aren't you coming down for breakfast?"
'Hmm, what was the thing that he usually said to his mother again at this moment?...'
Ethan's face flushed as he realised how he must look dishevelled, wrapped in blankets like a sickly child.
"Ah. I'll get ready soon… mom."