LGHTNOVELBOOK chapter 1
That day, it was a day of exceptionally good fortune.
No sooner had I left the house than three black cats crossed my path, and though the crosswalk signal was green, a truck screeched to a halt just inches away.
Ominous signs appeared without cease, truly a day of good fortune.
And as the pinnacle of that ill omen, it occurred.
“Huh? Shit?”
The stairs leading down to the subway.
Of all places, it was there that I missed a step.
My ankle twisted, and I tumbled head over heels down the stairs.
Bumping and crashing, I arrived far quicker than if I’d walked down normally.
‘Ah… it hurts.’
Had I struck my head hard during the fall?
From the edges of my vision, red blood gradually spread.
I was conscious, but I couldn’t speak.
‘Am I going to die?’
There was no one around.
Which meant there was no one to call 119 for me.
That was as good as a death sentence.
It seemed the short curse word I’d uttered as I missed my step would become my last words in this world.
The strength was draining from my body, and my whole being ached.
My consciousness was fading too.
‘Is this… is this how my life ends?’
I’d finished my military service, graduated from university.
It was time to start my career.
And this catastrophe happened on the way to a job interview.
‘I haven’t achieved anything yet…’
To die like this.
I wanted to cry like a child.
But now, my body wouldn’t even allow me to weep.
A little more time passed, and my consciousness was sucked away into the distant abyss of darkness.
And…
*
“Hmm… handsome.”
My reflection in the stream.
It wasn’t the face I knew.
The black hair and black eyes were the same.
“Black hair and black eyes might be a common color.”
But not here.
To put it simply, this was a foreign country.
A place where black hair and black eyes were uncommon.
A Western visage framed by hair and eyes of deepest black.
Mysterious, perhaps… dreamlike in appearance.
Truthfully, I’d heard the word “handsome” applied to myself countless times.
But the face reflected in the stream surpassed it all effortlessly.
“A Western beauty with black hair and eyes… even celebrities can’t compare.”
The face in the stream was youthful.
Naturally.
I was ten, still just a child.
And yet, handsome enough to conjure a future of broken hearts with ease.
But something else held more weight than that.
“I… I must have been reincarnated, right?”
Reincarnated and ten years old.
At the age of ten in this place, I recalled the memories of my previous life, cut short too soon.
“A fantasy world…”
This place, where I gained a new life, wasn’t a foreign country but a world of fantasy.
Magic existed. Monsters existed.
To be honest, a part of me rejoiced when I realized that.
For someone who enjoyed reading fantasy novels, this might be a stroke of luck.
However…
“If you were going to reincarnate me anyway, why not as a noble or royalty?”
An orphan without parents.
I could almost excuse it, since it was the same situation as my previous life.
At least orphans should be in an institution.
But as things stand, I was a street urchin wandering the streets.
“Haa… Not like I can walk into an orphanage and ask them to raise me…”
I wanted to voice my discontent with the being responsible, with God.
God was the only entity I could imagine being involved in my reincarnation.
“Well, complaining would be impossible, I suppose.”
God is God, precisely because one cannot meet Him.
So, I would have to keep my grievances to myself.
Anyway, there was something more pressing than God at the moment.
“How am I supposed to live from now on…?”
A matter of survival, how to stay alive.
A fantasy world that should be brimming with dreams and hope.
In such a world, I was condemned to a life of hardship, a parentless urchin.