Past Lives (Part - 1)

"You, what? Are you sure?"

"Yes. A hundred and one percent sure," I confirmed.

"Alright then! We will Kick start the eatery now!" Mom cheered in mock enthusiasm.

"Yes!" and I matched her perfectly.

The money that I got from selling potions wouldn't be enough to start the Eatery, but that didn't mean that it was less by any margin.

After spending 80 Bronze Vels on 24 bottles, I was left with 52 Bronze Vels.

Since they were the lowest grade potions, they sold for less, and since they were from a no-name person like me, they went for even less.

But after calculating profit and loss, it turned out to be equal to a middle-class man's average salary.

Even so, as lucrative as it sounded, it wasn't practical, nor was it efficient. As neither could I get great ingredients as Dia's super potent venom, nor I had any other potion recipes.

And besides, running a restaurant was bound to be super expensive, no?

All the money would go down the drain just to get the building renovated, fix the nooks and crannies, deal with the pests, and all the other small repairs that the equipment needed.

Even then, what was an eatery for?

For food!

For delicious, finger-licking, tasty, food. Combined with a mouth-watering aroma.

Hunger satiating meals are everything!

"We should have enough money to buy all the decorations and utensils after the next sale,'' I mused to myself.

After we planned how we were going to renovate the place in the coming days, we went to sleep, with me snuggled in Mum's warm embrace.

Peace.

After a long night of dreamless sleep, I woke up in a familiar bed, only to see a familiar ceiling. It was a soft and fluffy bed that had me sandwiched between it and a white blanket. Beside the bed was a bedside table with a digital clock on top that displayed the time and date.

[7:04 a.m., Sunday, 23 Oct, 2040]

"Yawn~"

A single teardrop formed at the periphery of my eyes as I yawned and stretched my arms.

"It has been a while since I last ate sandwiches with fruit juice. I guess I'll have just that for breakfast," I said to myself.

Today is also the day of the weekly check-ups for those who had ENAMAL implanted in their brains. To check if it is harming the body or brain in any way, and also to collect data for future updates and upgrades.

"Let's get moving then." I gave my final monologue in bed and immediately got out of bed before any lingering sleepiness caused my plans to buckle.

I got ready in 30 minutes and began preparing breakfast in the kitchen while humming to myself.

My entire body went cold all of a sudden.

"What was I thinking?" I asked myself, concerned that I was forgetting something very, very important to me.

I instinctively gripped my hands around my head, praying that the motion would help me grasp what I was forgetting.

The next second, however, a strong gust of wind blew most of the furniture and papers into the air, where they danced like snowflakes caught in a storm. I had no idea where they had come from.

Pain assaulted my head the next moment, as if an electric bolt had just struck me.

The walls of the apartment kitchen began to crumble all of a sudden. However, what was hidden behind those walls was not the room next door.

There was a playground full of kids, amidst them was a normal five-year-old black-haired kid sitting on one end of a see-saw while the other end was weighed down and lifted by a man's foot. The man was a middle-aged, black-haired man with a friendly smile on his face.

The child was giggling and laughing the entire time, sitting on a camping cloth spread out on the grass under the loving gaze of his mother.

The scene was quickly replaced by a wooden shack-style kitchen.

A silver-haired kid, barely reaching the waist of an adult, was trying to stir the vegetables swimming in the creamy soup filling the black pot.

Behind him was a similarly silver-haired woman in her mid-twenties, who was constantly giving him pointers while grilling her own meat dish.

The scene changed yet again, this time to show a drunk truck driver dozing off on his steering wheel as his truck crushed a car with the entire family inside it.

A house was on fire, with a black-haired and blue-eyed child crying in his wooden cradle while everything around him burned to cinders.

My brain was on the verge of shutting down due to constant over stimulation when the surrounding scenery began to change, but I couldn't pay attention because my brain had begun to go numb, my vision going blurry as waves nausea hit me.

"ARGHHH!" Nobody could hear me scream at the top of my lungs.

The pain vanished without a trace, and my body ceased all functions as it fell to the floor, if there was any.

"Ryan… is that you? Or even him…? What is his name…? A biotech firm…? Silver moon…? Mum…? Dia…? Dad…? Codex…?"

I muttered a string of incoherent words that felt both familiar and strange.

"What was my name again?"

After that, everything went dark.

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In that dim light, I couldn't tell where I was going or if I was moving at all.

First and foremost, where am I?

Then I came to the realization there was nothing I could do. I was unable to move, see, smell, feel, or even speak.

Even thinking coherently was a hassle.

Bah! Such a waste of brain cells, let's just sleep.

Time continued to pass unbothered; there was no indication of how much time had passed.

There was nothing to do, and I could not even think of anything worth doing. So much so that simply floating by became a massive bore.

All right! Let's see, I'm in a dark place—oh, a light appears, interesting.

I couldn't tell whether it was far or close, but it was there, a white light the size of a dot in this place of nothingness.

I could see it but I had no eyes. I knew it was there, but I couldn't feel it. It was difficult to explain, but I just knew there was a white dot floating in the nothingness.