CHAPTER 2: Tanaka

Life is beautiful. 

That's what society says. It is beautiful up to some point in life, but as one ages, the beauty withers away. Everyone despairs in the game of life, but slowly they find a way to live with it. Find peace in pain, making it beautiful once again.

And everyone has to go through this cycle of life. 

Well, that was not the case for Tanaka. Life wasn't as pleasing to him, then what other people have.

 Life is unfair. Sometimes the cycle isn't the same for everyone. Some are born with extreme wealth, or brains to figure out the true meaning of the universe. And few lucky ones don't even get to taste the gloom of life.

 In Tanaka's case, he got the short end of the stick.

All he knew about his parents was, they left him at an orphanage. Not at the door, on a basket, with a warm blanket on him, but inside the bin next to the orphanage's door.

Orphanage life wasn't the best either. He had many memories of that place, but not a single one that brought a smile to his face.

He was looked down on by everyone in there. The caretaker and the other children scowled at him. Why? God knows, cause he never knew, or bothered asking about it.

A place supposed to fill him with warmth made him colder than a corpse.

All he did was run, hide and get his underwear pulled to his head by the other kids.

'This orphanage-I need to get out of here.'

And he did. At the age of 16, he got a part-time job at a ramen shop. Cleaning the shop was a lot better than staying at the rotten place. The free ramen for dinner every day also helped a lot.

The salary he received was enough to pay for the new place he found.

 Though it was someone's basement, it worked. A place that he could finally call home, where nobody teased him about the large birthmark on his forehead.

 The all nighter he put reading, hiding under the blankets on those creaky bunk beds, paid off. A relatively good high school provided him with a full scholarship for three years of his highschool.

But life was still sh*t.

Being the smartest in the room didn't sit right with everybody. Nobody pulled his underwear again or put off the lit bud of a cigarette on his tongue. 

The bullies made him do their homework, but that didn't bother him much. Extra homework meant revision for him. But the worst thing was to watch his first love, the beautiful blonde who took the same train as him, sit on the bully's lap and they cuddled together as he did their assignments. That's when he realised- 

'Nice guys do finish last'

But getting a tattoo, smoking a pack of cigarettes everyday felt and looked too bothersome. Instead, he focused on his studies and ignored everything else. His so-called friends talked behind his back. Sometimes a nerd, sometimes the teacher's slave, and most of the time, ugly.

He hated it. Being called 'ugly', that is. His physical form, the big birthmark on his forehead and the skinny body he had, probably because of lack of care in the orphanage, wasn't something he had control over.

There was no point in fighting over it, trying to clarify himself. They would never understand, like how he never understood the sentiment of bunking classes.

 He stopped talking to them and tried to forget his first love, too.

Now alone, he found sanctuary in the school library. Books were the only companion he had. The magic of words and the emotions behind them hooked him. Books became his second love.

At first he loved non-fiction, "101 ways to change your life", then space cowboys and then down the degenerate route- harem erotic novels. His first love was now replaced by anime girls. 

Hundreds of those books filled his desk and shelves. And then he thought-

'Why don't I write on my own?'

The first book he wrote and published on the internet had twenty pages. He "accidentally" deleted his account that had all the drafts of over 1000 chapters and didn't try to retrieve them. Also, the story was never meant to be published.

He then stopped writing for a while. Not because he hated it, but because his final high school exams were near. Once they finished, he sat at his table and kept on writing and publishing every day along with his new part-time job as a Junior IT intern. Having a good connection with his teachers helped a lot with the recommendation letters.

Was he happy with his life now? Sometimes. When the reviews and the comments were good, and not pointing out the comma, he forgot to place on line thirty-seven. 

Writing and programming-which was mainly looking for answers on the internet. That was his life.

It was sh*t, but now it was sh*t that he loved.

Living like this was not the euphoria he imagined, but there was something that always pushed him. To wake up, eat a bowl of cereal, watch anime and crouch in front of the computer for twelve hours every day.

 No matter how much life stank, he found joy in it. 

'I have one life, so I will live it to the best and by best I mean watch the second season of "Cat Girls on Mars." '

Well- he never got to watch the new season. The day of the release, he got hit by a truck - the infamous truck that always has a drunk driver or a failed brake.

The truck slammed him. Pain, there was pain, a lot of it, and then once he looked at his lower body, there was acceptance.

'I am going to die.'

At the side of the road, losing consciousness, he could see a group of people surrounding him. Most took pictures, some looked, the evil ones laughed and only a single person was calling the ambulance.

Though he didn't care. His eyes were glued to the bin next to him. He chuckled. Life loved playing with him.

'Found inside a bin and died next to one.'

'Life wasn't shit. I was.'

Now the sh*t of a life was gone.

Death was here.

 It started feeling cold as his world went dark. The icy embrace of death already had a hold of him. But that embrace was.... warm. Warmer than that cursed orphanage.

The cold was not so bad, but it prickled and tickled him. 

'Since when did Death tickle someone to the life? So people in death's door do hallucinate '

However, the more his hands moved, the more it felt real. Instead of the road or even the emptiness of death...he felt grass.

Slowly, his whole bodily sensation returned. Confused, he opened his eyes. 

'Wow'

He said as he gazed at the night sky dancing with the light of the stars. Never had he seen this, except in movies where the love birds sleep on a grass field, holding hands. Their eyes glimmering with light, but the brightest is the one next to them.

'Cringe, but I wouldn't mind if there is also a beautiful cat girl beside me.'

He turned to his left, and no one was there. Disappointed, he stood up and looked around. He stood in the middle of a backyard surrounded by high wooden fences. There was nothing ahead, only a large forest. Too dark to see, and not so curious and stupid to explore at night on his own.

'This-'

He finally realised. Transmigration to another world. A cliche that happened in a lot of novels found its way to him.

He turned back and saw a cabin attached to the backyard. The door to the backyard was open. 

The idea of this happening always popped up in his mind whenever he wrote and read reincarnation novels. But that didn't mean he wanted it.

Being in another country often came with anxiety to him. Now, being in a whole different world, shook him. To the point, he couldn't move.

The door in front was open. He wanted to check what was waiting for him.

'But what if it's a trap? Somebody could be waiting right behind that door with an axe, to chop my head off.' 

Dying once didn't mean he was open to the idea of experiencing it again. Though a new experience, it wasn't fun at all.

He took a deep breath and tiptoed towards the door, and his fist was in a stance to throw a right hook. 

Once he was near, he looked through the small gap of the door and found no one hiding behind it. Then he peeked inside the room. No one was there.

'Tsk. I couldn't use my magnificent right hook that I worked for hundred of hours'

Which was a lie.

Tanaka took a quick scan of the room. It was identical to the basement he had. Too much similar, in fact.

He lived in that same basement for six years of his life. Moving out of the place, even though he could afford a better one, felt wrong. The room, the arrangement of furniture, the unwashed stacks of bowls, the cat girl posters, and the tissues-who knows what he used it for- littered on the ground. 

That was his home. Only his.

And now the room he was in was similar. The placement of the bed next to it on a table was the same. Except the posters, the tissues on the floor. 

As he looked around, his eyes fell on the mirror.

Again.

He froze. This time, even more confused and scared. He walked to the mirror, touching his face, especially the bandage on his left cheek.

"This-"

He was at a loss for words. After all, he was seeing the seventeen-year-old behind him in the mirror.

Tanaka didn't transmigrate into someone else's body. 

'But why the seventeen-year-old me?'

Seventeen years old, he wasn't the healthiest. Skinny, about 47 kg and the dark circle under the eyes spoke a lot about him.

But that wasn't the part that shocked him. After all, in the novels he read, sometimes people reincarnated as themselves. 

The thing that overwhelmed him was-

"This band aid."

He remembered this one clearly. While heading to school one day, on his old rusty bicycle. His cycle stumbled on a rock. He fell head first on the ground in front of the school gate.

The worst part, his bully was there. He laughed his heart out and then the entire crowd around him chuckled. Tanaka didn't have any injuries except a scar on his cheek. 

That day wasn't memorable because of the embarrassing moment. For the first time, his bully had helped him.

Still laughing, he picked up Tanaka and took him to the infirmary. Once the school nurse cleaned the wound and put a bandaid on it, the bully wrote "Loser" on it and left, laughing.

Now the same bandaid was on him and the word "Loser" was there. But why was this version of Tanaka transmigrated?

Also, the big birthmark on his forehead was gone.

Before he could find an answer, he needed some clothes to hide the forest on his crotch. Butt naked and some grass stuck on his ass, he walked to the closet.

As he was doing so, distracted, his eyes fell onto the table next to the bed. The $5000 computer he bought was missing. Instead, there was the biggest book he had ever seen. The length and breadth was of a normal book, but its height- it probably had over a million pages.

"It's longer than my head and neck combined."

 The book had a black leather cover. The back was the same, with nothing written on it. He turned the book and there was something on it.

He just couldn't read it.

"The fuck is this? A pentagon inside a triangle?"

And there were a series of these weird shapes.

'Don't tell me I have to learn a new language? Where is my natural ability to understand the world's language which reincarnated people get?"

As he said, the weird characters around him soon started to change, not in the book itself. As if his mind was a translation tool, the characters duplicated, floated above the book, and changed to "English". The language he was comfortable with, despite being Japanese.

"Chapter 1: Prologue."

He started reading the book, still naked. And the more he read, the more he cringed. The grammar mistakes and the wrong use of verbs pissed him off.

However, it felt... closer. The start of something, the first words he wrote, that ignited his love for writing. Something he shouldn't have forgotten.

And the more he read, the more he remembered. He read through all the first chapter with 2000 words. Once he finished, he kneeled on the floor.

"The Heart From Abyss."

The first book he wrote, with ten chapters published and the rest lost. The very first chapter of it was there. It clocked to him where he had transmigrated. He did have guesses to be in a world of the tens of books he wrote, but not this one.

Because it was a mess- a mess he created.

He took a long sigh.

'I'm fu*ed."

 Life is about a get a lot more sh*ttier than it was before.