Night draped the world in silence. A young man walked alone down an empty road, his footsteps crisp against the hush. Each step echoed. The air was cool, thick with the scent of distant rain filled the atmosphere. Streetlights flickered, their glow stretching his shadow long across the road. The world felt vast, empty, like he was the only soul left awake.
Lost in thought, he walked, his mind drifting like a leaf on quiet water. Step by step, the night wrapped around him, soft and endless. In all this silence, his phone gave a sudden notification sound, walking at the roadside, he took his phone out and started reading the text.
"NEW NOVEL COMING SOON!"
Then suddenly, a sharp horn—
[VROOOMP!]
His head turned left, but too late. A truck roared forward, metal and speed crashing into him. The impact sent him flying. His body hit the roadside hard.
Warmth spread over his body, thick, pooling blood began to spill across the road, dark and endless under the streetlights. The world around him blurred, distant voices fading into the ringing silence.
Lying on the cold roadside, he felt life slipping from him. His breath came in short, shaky gasps. He murmured, barely a whisper,
"Am… I dying…?"
A weak chuckle left his lips, almost bitter. "… I… I don't wanna die like this."
His fingers twitched, as if trying to reach for something. The night felt heavier now, pressing down on him.
He felt his body dissolved like he was sinking deeper and deeper into an ocean with no bottom. The cold wrapped around him, pulling him down. In the darkness, his memories played like a broken film.
"I've… tried my best…", his voice was a whisper in his own mind. He saw himself chasing dreams that never welcomed him.
The boy was nothing more than a ghost in the world. Just after completing high school, he lost his parents.
Many of his dreams were just buried with them long ago. Still, he kept living and tried to make his worthless life worth living. He continued his university studies and also worked part time to pay his expenses.
It had been four years, living just a quiet, unnoticed life. His days were filled with emptiness—emptiness that turned silence into noise, enough to make every evening feel endless.
Despite all this, there were also some moments that he enjoyed, the time he spent with school friends, unlike University where he barely speaks to anyone and the other joyful moments he had, was in reading novels, his only escape from reality.
Now, in these blurry moments, he realised the years he lost to hesitation, to silence, were years he could never recover. He should have met his school friends at least once in these years.
Even the girl he once admired, he could have confessed to her, but always doubted his own worthiness. And at last his parents to whom he hesitated to express anything till their last moments.
His thoughts swirled like a storm. He started losing his grip on his own words. However, in the depths of his fading mind, a thought clung to him. They say there may be rebirth after death…
"If I get another chance, I will not live in this way… that life will be different…" And with those words, his consciousness slipped away, falling into endless darkness.
—
—
—
{A few moments later}
A weight pressed on his body heavy, suffocating. Pain throbbed through him, deep and real. His mind stirred.
"I.. am alive?"
With effort, he forced his eyes open. Blurry shapes swam before him, his breath hitched. Instead of the cold roadside, he saw green leaves above him, shining in filtered light. His vision wavered, adjusting to the dim glow.
"A…Am I being reborn?" he murmured, in his low voice.
His fingers twitched. He felt his whole body, strange, different. Panic and confusion twisted inside him. This… This wasn't the world he had left behind.
"Where is my mother…?" He muttered, believing that it's his rebirth, he tried not to be nervous.
For a few moments, he lay still, his mind heavy, with empty thoughts.
Then, his vision cleared shapes, colour became visible to him.
Above him, stretched a large tree with sprawling branches covered in small leaves.
He turned his head left and right, taking a full glance at his surroundings.
He was lying under a big tree, which seems to be separate from a dense forest- like area. A wide open wide open sky was visible around it.
The silver moonlight of the full moon half-shone over tree leaves. The sound of the night breeze lingered in the air.
His fingers pressed into the small grass beneath him. "W…Where am I?"
Slowly, he pushed himself and sat up. His breath caught in his throat as he looked down at himself.
His previous pent shirt over his frail body was gone. In its place was something unfamiliar.
"Huh?"
He shot up from the ground. He saw his light black-colored clothes drenched in heavy blood stains.
His hands ran over his arms, chest, and face, bewildered. The skin was smooth, unscarred. The muscles beneath felt lean, a lingering fatigue clinging to them.
His eyes landed on the blood on the ground, as if it had fallen from someone injured walking by and ended near him. His heart started beating sharply, he stepped backward, tucking his back against the trunk of the tree.
His breath caught shaky gasps. "This… this is me?… What's… happening…" he murmured, his voice unsteady. His mind spun, struggling to grasp reality.
With an uneasy breath, he sat back down, hands gripping half his clothes and half the grass beneath him. The place fell silent except for his own heartbeat thudding in his ears. But then suddenly,
[haaooorrhh!]
A loud and strange voice fell on his ears.
He couldn't understand what was happening, but his guts told him it definitely wasn't something right.
It was surely the sound of some dangerous animal. His gaze fixed on the area before him, with uncertainty flickering in his eyes constantly alarming his whole body.
Then again, the sound came, more violent this time.
[haaooorrhh!]
"Fuck~"
He found himself frozen, his mind screaming that something was wrong. But, he just couldn't move with wide open eyes on the area before him, feeling the rapid beat of his own heart.