A New Beginning : Improved

[Read the prologue, I see people miss out on it a lot but it's pretty important.]

It was July the 3rd in 1989. Inside a hospital room lay a woman with her newborn child. The only sound within the room were the child's cries; outside the room, there was constant honking and people talking.

The mother, Elizabeth Hawthorne, was taking very shallow, difficult breaths as the nurse carefully put the baby into her arms.

Elizabeth smiled weakly as she looked at the baby in her arms; she had dreamed of this very moment. A deep sadness flashed past her eyes as she looked at the child. She was very aware of her own condition and how fragile it really was.

'It's not fair,' she thought.

She had faced the pregnancy alone. Her husband had run away with all her money the minute responsibility came knocking on his door. She hadn't heard from him ever since, and by now, she had stopped caring.

She had put her full strength into preparing for her child, Liam. She had moved back in together with her elderly father. They had tried their best to prepare for all the essentials, but with only her father's retirement money and some of her leftovers, it was a difficult thing to do.

As she cradled her son one final time, Elizabeth felt her energy slowly disappear and her body weakening every second. Immense tiredness took over. Despite her will to survive, she knew she couldn't.

She looked up at her father, Harold Bennett, who stood quietly beside the bed. His face had aged significantly over the past year, and his eyes were filled with pain and sorrow as he looked at her.

"Take care of him, Dad," Elizabeth whispered, her voice trembling as she spoke.

Harold nodded. He had tried preparing himself for this moment. But in the end, how could he possibly be prepared for this? Outliving his children had been his worst fear ever since they were born, and after losing his wife, his daughter was also about to leave him.

"I will take care of him," Harold said, barely able to speak as tears started streaming down his face. "I'll raise him as well as I can. Don't worry about us. Live your best life when you reach heaven."

Elizabeth managed to smile faintly before her eyes closed as the exhaustion took over. She remained like that for a few hours before she passed away in her sleep, leaving behind an elderly man and a newborn baby.

Harold had never expected to be a parent to a young child again, let alone being a single parent. His daughter's passing had aged him even more overnight, with all his hair turning grey. But the responsibility he felt for Liam Hawthorne was his new purpose in living.

They now lived in a small apartment in New York City, which he could rent for a good price. As for relatives? Harold barely had any left. The family he still had lived all the way on the other side of the world and hadn't been in contact for a long time.

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Liam sat on a couch as he looked at the city while he heard his grandfather read a paper in the room next to the one he was in. But his mind was somewhere else. He had had many, many questions ever since he was reborn here.

'How did I get here?'

'What was that being?'

'What about my old body?'

These questions about his previous life flew through his head daily. But the main question going through his head had always been:

'What now?'

He had lived another life before this one. His memories of that life were perfectly intact. They weren't hazy or distant; instead, they were just... there.

Especially the moment of his death. The day that weird thing swallowed him had been something that came back in his nightmares almost daily for the first few years he was here. The immense pain he had suffered there had changed him.

He didn't understand what happened or how it happened, but here he was, trying to mix in with others while being aware that they were nothing like him.

His previous life hadn't been particularly great, either. He had been a historian. He had studied the past, gone on countless adventures to mysterious places.

Death? He had seen it many times on his journeys. People died to traps, hunger, thirst, but most of all, the brutality of other people—those who killed for fame, wealth, or just because they could.

He had been ambushed by robbers tens of times while bringing ancient scriptures back to his place, barely surviving each time by running away or proving his worth and waiting for rescue.

Everything to see another day, even if he had to suppress his anger.

'But it's different now,' Liam thought. 'Here I can change.'

He had a grandfather in this universe, something he didn't have before.

Liam smiled as he thought about all the nights his grandfather told him stories about ancient civilizations and places far away. Despite knowing most of them already, Liam always listened along.

His grandfather had been a history teacher in a nearby school before he had to retire. He loved his job, and he loved history. Telling Liam about it and seeing him pay so much attention made him smile each time he talked about it.

As for his real father? Liam didn't care about him. He had long heard from his grandfather what he had done and wasn't surprised.

He doubted if he would ever see him. Liam had long since seen his grandfather as his father figure and thus didn't see the point in searching for the person who abandoned him.

'Who needs a father if you have someone like Gramps anyway?' Liam mused as he headed upstairs to go to bed.