So.
This is what being born feels like the second time.
Zero out of ten. Would not recommend.
One moment I was flatlined on a hospital bed at twenty, bitter and annoyed that the universe had wasted a perfect brain on a defective body—and the next moment I was screaming my lungs out into blinding white light with absolutely no dignity.
Cold air scorched my new lungs.
Hands grabbed me. Lifted me. Turned me.
Too big. Too clumsy. Too careless.
Congratulations, I thought dimly, you've been reincarnated as a screaming potato.
Voices echoed around me—sharp, urgent, emotional—but none of them carried anything that sounded like love. No one said my name.
Because I didn't have one.
And just like that, I knew.
Ah. We're doing this again.
I was abandoned before I could even properly see.
Not dramatically. No tearful goodbyes. No tragic last look.
Just… paperwork.
A clipboard. A pen. A line written somewhere I would never be allowed to read.
Male infant. No identification. No family present.
That was it.
Twenty years in my last life and no one at my deathbed.
Less than twenty minutes in this one and already discarded.
Consistent, at least.
They placed me in a state-run group home on the edge of the city. The kind of place that survives on donations, exhausted caretakers, and the quiet understanding that the world will never give it quite enough.
The building smelled like disinfectant, old soup, and resignation.
I learned very quickly that crying didn't bring miracles. It brought routine.
And routine, oddly enough, was comforting.
Growing up with the mind of a dead adult inside a toddler's body is a special kind of psychological hell.
First of all—coordination is humiliating.
You know exactly how walking should work, but your legs take that information and interpret it as a suggestion. I spent weeks falling over with the full understanding of Newtonian balance and none of the muscle control to apply it.
Second—no one listens to a baby.
You can be a genius with a photographic memory and still be ignored because you drool.
Humbling experience. Truly.
Still… compared to my first life?
This body was a miracle.
It didn't hurt to breathe.
My bones didn't feel like glass.
My heart beat without machines arguing with it.
For the first time in either life, I was not trapped in a failing prison of flesh.
And I intended to take full advantage of that.
The group home staff became familiar figures quickly.
Ms. Kato ran the place like a tired general waging a losing war. Always exhausted. Always pushing forward anyway. She scolded loudly and cared quietly. Mr. Sato fixed everything from broken chairs to broken toys and pretended not to notice when kids hovered around him because they felt safe near his steady presence. Mrs. Lin came on weekends with donated books and that kind of warmth that wasn't flashy but lingered.
And the kids.
Jiro, all knees and loud bravery, who acted tough because it made people stop asking questions.
Mika, gentle and soft-spoken, who drew suns on every blank surface as if trying to remind the world what warmth looked like.
Tadashi, sharp-tongued and angry at everything because it was easier than admitting he was scared.
They became… my people.
Not my family.
But close enough that the instinct to protect them took root early and stubbornly.
I watched them like an older brother trapped in a smaller body. Memorized their habits, their moods, their weaknesses. Not for control—at first—but because knowing is its own kind of shield.
And because I had already lost one entire world.
I wasn't eager to lose another.
My photographic memory remained perfect.
That part of me hadn't died in the hospital room.
If anything, it felt sharper.
Every face I saw once stayed forever. Every word spoken etched itself into order. I didn't "learn" in the normal sense. I simply absorbed.
And when books arrived?
Oh.
Oh.
That old hunger came roaring back to life.
Picture books first. Then comics. Then manga. Then, blessedly, science.
Physics texts that adults assumed were far beyond me. Biology books with diagrams that made nurses uncomfortable. I didn't just read them—I devoured and organized them, building mental libraries layered by discipline, theory, and speculation.
Motion. Energy. Cells. Force. Structure.
Everything moved.
Everything vibrated.
Even before my quirk existed, the idea had already taken root in my mind.
By age four, the other kids had figured out that I was "weird but useful."
Jiro dragged me over whenever he wanted to look impressive.
"Draw me like the hero on TV!" he demanded one afternoon.
I did. Perfectly. The pose. The muscles. The impossible confidence.
Mika clapped so hard her palms turned red.
Tadashi scoffed. "So what? It's just copying."
I looked up at him with a lazy smile. "So is everything you say, but you still talk."
The room laughed.
Petty? Yes.
Effective? Also yes.
He never quite decided whether he hated me or respected me after that.
Internally, my monologue never stopped.
Observation: emotional hierarchy established. Mika gravitates to calm authority. Jiro responds to spectacle. Tadashi masks insecurity with antagonism. Ms. Kato suppresses burnout through order. Mr. Sato hides grief in routine.
I wasn't "cold."
I was attentive.
Understanding people meant being able to protect them.
Or dismantle them.
Depending on the day.
At night, lying in my small bed while the others slept, I stared at the ceiling and thought of my first life.
Of endless hospital walls.
Of a mind that had burned brighter than the body that carried it.
This time was different.
This time, the universe had given me a functional foundation.
And I was not stupid enough to waste it.
So, I thought quietly, no family again. No problem. I'll build my own.
And maybe one day…
I'd build something even bigger.
I did not know yet that power slept inside me.
That the vibration I felt in my chest was more than a heartbeat.
That the word quirk would eventually rearrange my future.
But even at five, before the world ever noticed me for anything extraordinary, one truth had already hardened into certainty:
I had died once as someone forgettable.
I would not make that mistake again.