Rain fell against the window tap, tap, tap.
Like a bored percussionist who'd given up on finding the melody but couldn't quite stop playing. Each droplet slid down the glass in those little racing paths that you'd bet on as a kid.
Inside, the diner was having an identity crisis. Too upscale for the neighborhood, too nostalgic for the modern era, too trying for anyone to feel comfortable. Red carpet is the kind that makes you hyper-aware of your shoes. The ceiling sprawled above like someone's fever dream of baroque excess: floral rosettes, delicate butterflies, and serpents consuming their own tails in an endless cycle of self-cannibalization. The ouroboros motif was everywhere, as if the interior designer had read exactly one book on symbolism. Amber lights nested in the center of each design, casting a warm glow that was probably meant to be inviting but landed somewhere closer to "liminal space at 3 AM."
Everything is pristine. Everything is silent.
Especially the idiot passed out in the corner booth.
That idiot,was me.
[01:37:22]
The groan escaped before consciousness fully returned a rookie mistake. You should always assess the situation before announcing your vulnerability to potential threats. Not that I was thinking about threats. I wasn't thinking about anything. My brain was a television tuned to a dead channel, all static and snow and that annoying high-pitched whine that makes you wonder if the problem is the TV or your ears.
When my eyes finally opened, they were greeted by the absence of information. Just grey nothing where recent events should have been filed away in neat chronological order.
Where am I?
Who am I?
Why does my head feel like someone's using it as a practice drum?
I sat up slowly, cataloging sensations. Body: functional, mostly. Head: experiencing what could charitably be called a "weather event." Mouth: tasted like I'd been chewing on old pennies.
Then the cough hit.
It was sudden. The kind that makes your whole body participate whether it wants to or not. My left hand moved on its own muscle memory, apparently snatching a handkerchief from somewhere. When I pulled it away from my mouth, there were red spots on the white cloth.
Blood.
Mine but ,I hadn't confirmed it yet.
I stared at the stain with the kind of detached curiosity you develop when your brain hasn't quite caught up to the severity of your circumstances. It was red.The kind of red that shows up in medical dramas right before a commercial break.
I tried to remember how I'd gotten here. What have I been doing? Why did I have a handkerchief?Where did it come from if i dont have pockets on this shirt? The questions piled up like cars in a highway accident, each one crashing into the next, and behind them all was just fog. Thick, deliberate fog that my brain kept running into like a particularly stupid moth.
The headache persisted, metronomic in its insistence.
Probably just a cold. A really bad cold. With amnesia. And existential implications.
People get those, right?
My gaze drifted as gazes do when you're avoiding thinking about the blood you just coughed up on to a handkerch-
There was a gun.
Not a metaphorical gun. Not a gun-shaped shadow or a toy that could be mistaken for something else in poor lighting. An actual, physical pistol, sitting on the melamine surface like it had been waiting for me to notice it.
I picked it up.
And here's where things got interesting.
My hands moved with practiced efficiency, checking the weapon with the kind of casual expertise that suggested this wasn't my first time holding a firearm. Or my tenth. Or possibly my hundredth. The weight settled into my palm like it belonged there. Also I was wrong, it was a toy which felt like I betrayed a part of myself that I can't remember. Polymer frame lightweight. Airsoft replica, designed to mimic a 9mm service pistol. A toy gun for people playing war criminal on weekends, complete with safety orange tips filed off to look more authentic.
But my fingers knew exactly where to check the magazine release. Exactly how to verify the chamber it was empty. Exactly how to adjust my grip for optimal control.
Why do I know this?
Why do my hands know this?
And why does it feel so natural that I didn't even question it until just now?
Outside, the night pressed against the windows like a curious cat. Rain continued its percussion solo. A few cars sat in the parking lot shapes that triggered something in the back of my mind. Not recognition exactly. More like déjà vu's awkward cousin who shows up uninvited and lingers by the snack table.
The sound of porcelain touching wood clink cut through my spiral of increasingly concerning questions.
I turned.
And there she was.
[PAUSE]
Let me be clear about something: I'm not the type to wax poetic about women. I don't suddenly lose my ability to form coherent sentences. I don't believe in love at first sight or that garbage about time stopping when you meet someone special.
But.
But.
She was the kind of beautiful that makes you understand why ancient civilizations went to war. Red diner uniform that had clearly been tailored by someone who understood exactly what they were doing and what they were doing bordered on psychological warfare. The skirt ended at a length that would make HR representatives nationwide reach for their policy manuals while simultaneously wondering if they should update said manuals. Auburn hair cascaded in waves that probably required an entire salon's worth of product and expertise to maintain, framing a face that hit every classical proportion of symmetry while somehow still looking unique. Slate-grey eyes lined with just enough makeup to emphasize without overwhelming. Full lips glossed to a shine that caught the amber light. A beauty mark on her right cheek, positioned with the kind of precision that made you suspect divine intervention.
She set down a cup of tea with practiced grace, and her smile-
Her smile was dangerous.
Not in the "she might hurt you" way. In the "you might do something stupid to keep seeing that smile" way.
"Here's your green tea, hon," she said, and her voice wrapped around the words like honey around a knife. "You sure that's all you're havin' tonight Lann?"
[RESUME]
Lann.
The name hit my eardrums, traveled to my brain, and found absolutely no corresponding file. No memories. No associations. Nothing. It was like hearing someone call out a stranger's name in a crowd and then slowly realizing they're looking at you.
Oh.
I'm Lann.
Who the hell is Lann?
But here's the thing about instincts: they exist before thought. They're the subroutines running in your brain's background processes, the automatic responses that kick in before your conscious mind even gets the memo. And my instincts these strange, foreign instincts that seemed to know things I didn't were very clear:
Play along. Figure it out later.
You're Lann. You've always been Lann. This is completely normal.
I nodded, going for casual agreement. "Yeah, thats all than-"
A voice emerged from my throat.
Not my voice.
Or rather, not the voice I expected to come out. Younger. Smoother. Missing the roughness that should have been there from…from what? I couldn't remember what my voice was supposed to sound like. But this wasn't it. This was someone else's voice, piped through someone else's vocal cords, emerging from someone else's mouth.
What.
Her eyes, those dangerously grey eyes, dropped to the napkin near my elbow. The one decorated with fresh blood spots. Her expression shifted, the flirtatious mask slipping to reveal genuine concern underneath.
"Hey... you okay? You're looking a little rough."
And then something took over.
Not me. Or rather, not the confused, amnesiac version of me that had woken up thirty seconds ago. Some other professional, practiced, experienced in the art of lying with your entire body slid into the driver's seat of my brain and took the wheel.
My face arranged itself into an expression of relaxed ease. My posture shifted to casual but not sloppy. My voice, this new, unfamiliar voice added a slight drawl that sounded natural despite definitely not being mine.
"I'm good," I heard myself say with the confidence of someone who'd been trained to lie convincingly under pressure. "Just fighting off a cold."
That's the correct medical terminology for "mysterious amnesia accompanied by hemoptysis in a body that isn't mine while inhabiting the life of someone named Lann who I've never heard of."
She studied me for a moment, clearly not buying it completely, but decided that pressing a customer about their obvious medical emergency probably wasn't in the employee handbook.
"Need anything else?" She said.
"Bathroom's in the back, right?" I asked, because I desperately needed a moment alone to have a proper existential crisis without an audience.
She gestured toward an elaborate phoenix carving on the rear wall, wings spread mid-rise in a pose of dramatic resurrection. "Yeah, men's is on the right, sugar."
"Thanks."
I stood.
And the movement was wrong.
Not wrong like incorrect. Wrong like too correct. Standing up you do when you've trained your body to never waste time,to never show weakness even in something as mundane as rising from a seated position.
Since when do I stand up like an action movie protagonist?
Since when do I stand up like someone who's been taught that every movement might be your last?
[01:42:13]
The bathroom door closed behind me with a click that sounded far too final.
I approached the mirror the way you approach a crime scene slowly, carefully, aware that what you're about to see might fundamentally change your understanding of reality.
I looked at my reflection.
And there it was: confirmation of the thing I'd been suspecting but hadn't wanted to acknowledge because acknowledging it would make it real.
That's not my face.
Younger features late teens, maybe early twenties. Different bone structure. Different everything. This wasn't the face that had looked back at me from mirrors and photographs and the front-facing camera that never gets the angle right.
Whose face is this?
Where is my face?
Do I even remember what my face looked like?
I tried to recall it my original face, the one I'd presumably been born with and came up empty. Just fog. More fog. An entire weather system of fog obscuring anything from before I woke up in that booth.
But.
But.
I had skills. Reflexes. The muscle memory that had checked that gun with professional efficiency. The instincts that knew how to lie, how to move, how to assess threats. These weren't things you picked up from internet tutorials or weekend seminars. These were the kind of skills you developed through serious training, experience and situations where mistakes had consequences measured in body bags.
New body.
New face.
New voice.
Old skills.
I gripped the edge of the sink, staring at the stranger wearing my consciousness.
The evidence was mounting. The I've been isekai'd.
I think…is that the word?
Transported. Reincarnated. Transmigrated…I dont know!? Whatever terminology the genre is using these days.
Into someone else's body. In a world with diners and airsoft guns that feel like real guns and sexy waitresses who look like they wandered out of some e-girls 5$ a month webpage that gave up on having a normal life after she figured out her cousin was her top donor.
The professional part of my brain the part that had apparently survived the cosmic relocation process began running diagnostics:
Current situation: Unknown.
Identity: Compromised.
Body: Not original equipment.
Memories: Missing in action.
Skills: Intact,thank god.
Threat level: To be determined.
Weapon: Toy BB gun with no BB's
Objective: Don't die. Figure out what's happening.
"Okay, Lann," I whispered to my reflection, testing the name on this new tongue. It felt foreign and familiar at the same time, like a word you've heard a thousand times but never actually said out loud.
I paused, considering my next move.
Then, because apparently I'd developed a flair for internal monologuing or had always had one and just couldn't remember I added:
"Let's figure out what kind of story we've been dropped into. And hopefully" I looked at the blood still staining my fingers, "it's the kind where the protagonist doesn't die of tuberculosis-adjacent symptoms in chapter one."
That would be embarrassing.
And narratively unsatisfying.
Though it would explain the ouroboros motif. Endless cycle of death and rebirth.
...I should probably be more concerned about the blood.
Outside, the rain continued its amateur percussion performance.
Inside, I continued to exist in a body that wasn't mine, with a name I didn't recognize, in a situation that made no sense.
Just another normal day, I thought, in what is clearly not a normal life.
[01:44:37]
[END CHAPTER 1]