I am quiet.
Not in a dramatic way. I just don't talk unless I need to. I walk home after class, earbuds in, mind elsewhere. Manga at night is the only thing that keeps the world from being too loud, too dumb. I finally finished Jujutsu Kaisen after being spammed with 'We can't read!' and 'reading comprehension curse!' memes about ninety different times for making a single mistake. And, of course, my immediate thought was to start slandering that bum—
Then a truck happened.
I was on the crosswalk, why the fuck a truck would suddenly swerve and start driving straight for me, I don't know, and I didn't even have the time to process my fury at these actions before getting ragdolled by the truck. My thoughts slowed down as everything began to black out.
Awareness came back in pieces. Too slow.
At first, I didn't know where I was. Panic prickled at me.
'What…? I can't move.'
Then I noticed something else. Another heartbeat. Another body. Side by side. Two forming brains. Two… souls.
'Wait, what? Another soul? This isn't… how it's supposed to be.'
But the other soul wasn't struggling. It wasn't even there in the way it should have been. It had been… rewritten.
I hadn't done it. Not consciously. I wasn't even fully "here" yet. And yet, when I arrived, the other soul was already aligned, folded around mine, its identity merged into mine.
'Huh…? It's gone? No. It's different.'
I arrived too late. The soul beside me—the one that should have been my twin—had already been overwritten, rewritten by accident. My presence, stronger and older than this newborn life, had folded it into mine in a single blink.
Two bodies. One soul. And the world accepted it without resistance.
Birth was violent. Light, noise, air burning my lungs. I cried without meaning to. So did the other body. I felt both at once, overlapping sensations slightly out of sync. Disorienting, yes—but not alarming.
'So… that's how it feels, controlling two bodies. Very disorienting.'
Voices spoke in Japanese. Thank god I'd taken college classes.
"So they are twins, huh?" a woman in traditional clothing muttered under her breath, clearly stressed. 'I guess my mother's pregnancy was rather dangerous, speaking of which,' I decided to turn my head around at our mother. Sweat soaked her hairline, face clenched in pain. She looked like she'd just fought a war.
'Wow. Yep. Totally a war.'
The names came later.
Kamo Futago—the one who opened his eyes first. That was me.
Kamo Tomogui—the one who followed half a breath later. Also me
I cried like a baby would, it felt awkward standing there silently, my other body quickly followed my lead as we cried till we fell asleep.
When I got up, my twin Tomogui also got up, as if totally in sync; we were both in a little cradle wrapped up in blankets. Tomogui and I both unwrapped ourselves from the blanket before looking each other straight in the eyes.
I poked at my hands, tiny fingers curling. The other body mirrored me, slightly delayed, slightly off. Weirdly fascinating.
'So it seems our actions are the same, if I pick up my left hand, Tomogui will pick up his left hand, that's rather troublesome, it must be because I am not used to having two bodies'. Still, it's fine for now, normal babies aren't expected to even take individual actions like walking for a year
And so began my first task, learning to differentiate the movement of my two bodies
______________________________________________________________________________