Reborn in Re:Zero

"This isn't exactly what I expected from reincarnation..."

A young man with dull yellow hair and dark red streaks, disheveled and covered in dust, walked beside a repulsive-looking man. His cerulean eyes, tinged with purple, scanned the surroundings, while his white pupils, surrounded by a black ring, blinked with annoyance. Though his appearance seemed neglected, the most striking feature was the clear irritation on his face. The man beside him wasn't helping.

That man, with sickly green skin, wore a disturbing grin as he rambled about nonsensical things, scratching his neck compulsively.

"And I have to be stuck with this creep... Seriously?" the young man thought, shooting an incredulous glance at him.

"Hey, Petelgeuse, where the hell are we supposed to be going?" he asked, struggling to contain his growing irritation.

They had been walking for an entire day. The fatigue, compounded by the discomfort of having that lunatic at his side, was starting to wear him down.

"Oh! Don't worry, Ava-kun! We can stop so you can get some sleep! Yes! YES! I'll make sure you rest really well!" Petelgeuse replied, his smile stretching impossibly wide, sending a chill down Ava's spine.

The now-named Ava forced a fake smile, as uncomfortable as it was contrived.

"Heh... And risk you doing something weird while I'm out? Not a chance, buddy. Pandora warned me not to turn my back on my 'companions'," he retorted, letting out a bitter laugh.

"That hurts, Ava-kun!" Petelgeuse exclaimed, clutching his chest theatrically. "We share a beloved connection to the dear witch! I would never harm someone as devoted as you!"

"You've got more than a few screws loose, don't you?" Ava scoffed, though he couldn't help injecting a touch of twisted humor into his tone.

It had only been a month since his reincarnation into this crazy world. Initially, despair consumed him. Now, he didn't even have the energy for that.

"This world is a total shitshow. At least give me a break, please..." he thought, scratching his neck. The constant hunger and the terrible quality of food only made things worse. Nothing in this place lived up to his expectations—not even dying.

Hell didn't seem like such a bad place right now.

"Disappointed, Ava-kun?" Petelgeuse asked, tilting his head grotesquely.

Ava sighed. "Nah... at least it's better than disappearing forever or floating in an abyss for eternity until I lose my mind. But could you keep your distance? You smell worse than a corpse," he replied, rolling his eyes in exhaustion.

"Look, look!" Petelgeuse, ignoring the comment, pointed excitedly toward the horizon. "We've arrived! The Oni Village is right there!"

Ava halted in his tracks, his gaze fixed on the small settlement in the distance. "Oni Village... Seriously?" he thought as a heaviness settled over him.

"Damn it... just when I thought things couldn't get worse..."

A cold sweat trickled down his cheek. It wasn't hard to guess what was about to happen. He knew this place too well. After all, it was part of the canon, and maintaining the canon was his only advantage in this twisted game.

Desperate or not, his only way to survive was to change nothing. He wasn't a protagonist with the ability to return from death, after all.

"Is something wrong, Ava-kun?" Petelgeuse asked, his usual unsettling smile plastered on his face.

"No... it's not my problem," Ava responded, regaining his composure while forcing a neutral expression. He had no intention of altering what was about to happen; he simply couldn't.

"Excellent! HAHAHA!" Petelgeuse laughed as blood began to stream from his eyes. His grin stretched even wider, in an almost inhuman manner. "It's going to be so much fun! Stay behind, Ava-kun. You're still new to this. I'll show you how to do the work our beloved witch has entrusted us with!"

Ava observed in silence, climbing a nearby tree for a better view. From his position, he could see chaos was about to unfold.

"There's nothing I can do..." he thought, letting out a heavy sigh.

"I'm a pathetic human from an equally pathetic world, with no magic, no skills to use. I used to know how to fight, but I became too lazy for that, and this fragile body doesn't help."

His gaze darkened, a vacant smile appearing on his face.

"Saving a race that kills newborns of its own kind just for being different...? No, thanks, I'll pass. Let their demon king save them."

With that bitter thought, he braced himself to witness what he knew was about to unfold.

Only ten minutes had passed before chaos and death erupted.

"So strong, yet so fragile..." Ava murmured, observing the scene with unsettling coldness as his eyes scanned the destruction. Why was it always like this? It felt so familiar, so predictable.

There was the canon, just as he had anticipated. His eyes locked onto a pair of twin girls, one with pink hair and the other with blue, clinging to each other as hooded figures surrounded them. The tension in the air was palpable, and in an instant, the assailants lunged at them, knives raised. With almost imperceptible movement, the pink-haired girl unleashed a gust of wind, slicing the attackers into pieces while she gasped for breath.

"This stinks as much as my first attempt at cooking when I was eight... Damn, that was a total disaster. I burned everything and ended up sick," he muttered, recalling with disdain those inconsequential days.

If he hadn't died, he would have been there, cracking terrible jokes and wondering what the hell he was doing with his life while watching anything to fill his pathetic, mundane existence. But here he was, witnessing a damn genocide and talking to himself, engulfed in the darkness of the reality around him.

The absurdity of his situation made him laugh at himself. He would have previously been sitting in his armchair, making stupid comments while watching this unfold on a screen.

"What a fucked-up irony..." he murmured, tinged with bitterness.

"Those were such good days..." he reflected, his tone wrapped in bitter nostalgia.

Just as he was about to continue his existential complaint, something unexpectedly irritating occurred. An invisible force hurled both sisters against a tree, causing it to creak under the impact.

"DISGRACE! WHAT A BEAUTIFUL LOVE!!" Petelgeuse shouted, approaching the twins with his twisted grin, while the same invisible force lifted the pink-haired girl, who screamed in agony as she felt her shining horn crack.

"LET ME GO...!" she exclaimed, gritting her teeth as a whirlwind began to form around her, only to dissipate without materializing.

"WHAT A MISFORTUNATE FRATERNAL LOVE! IT'S A REAL SHAME YOU WASTE IT LIKE THIS, WHEN YOU COULD USE IT TO LOVE OUR BELOVED WITCH! YES! YES!!!"

Petelgeuse's laughter echoed, his jaw cracking in a grotesque manner, while his smile showed no signs of fading.

"One-chan!" the blue-haired girl tried to get up to help her sister, only to be lifted by the same invisible force that had crushed her twin.

"NOW LET'S SEE! LET'S SEE!! WHO SHOULD I BREAK FIRST, THE PINK ONE OR THE BLUE ONE!? WHICH ONE WOULD BE THE MOST BEAUTIFUL OUTCOME!?" Petelgeuse's madness became more evident, and Ava's heart filled with a rage he barely contained.

"This crazy old man..." he muttered, frowning and clenching his teeth in anger.

"You didn't ask for my permission to screw this up!" Ava yelled, raising his hand toward Petelgeuse. Threads of golden energy formed at his fingertips before shooting toward him, wrapping around the lunatic in a tight grip.

"Eh...!?" Petelgeuse looked confused. Though his body was trapped, the unsettling grin on his face didn't fade.

"Ava-kun!? USING YOUR AUTHORITY ON ME!? WHAT'S WITH THIS UNEXPECTED TWIST IN THE SCRIPT!?" he exclaimed, his voice a mix of surprise, confusion, madness, and excitement.

Ava felt sweat starting to blur his vision.

"Damn, I knew I was weak... But I never imagined I wouldn't have enough miasma to do something as simple as materializing the Authority..."

His words caught in his throat, as if opening his mouth was a monumental challenge.

"Come on, it's not that bad..." His mind tried to calm him, but his body wouldn't respond.

"NEW ORDER! YOUR AUTHORITY WILL STOP WORKING FOR TEN SECONDS!!" he shouted with all his strength, and the threads around Petelgeuse began to flicker. In an instant, the two girls fell to the ground with a dull thud.

"Uh..." Ava knelt down, feeling the energy drain from his body. He brought his hands to his face, noticing with a foggy mind that his eyes and nose were starting to bleed, staining his hands a terrifying crimson.

The ring around his pupils, which shone with an intense golden hue when activating his Authority, slowly began to fade back to normal. He gasped for breath, increasingly exhausted, as if the weight of the world were on his shoulders, crushing him with no way to stop it.

"Cough! Cough...!" he began to choke, suffocating on his own blood, a grotesque spectacle that left him gasping for air.

"Oh! Look, Ava-kun! BUT LOOK WHAT YOU DID! YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE TRIED SO HARD FOR ME! MY BRAIN IS TREMBLING...!!" Petelgeuse exclaimed, clutching his chest in an almost theatrical manner.

"Stop giving me creepy vibes..." Ava thought, struggling to stay conscious as Petelgeuse's madness echoed in his ears.

The last thing he perceived through his blurred vision was Petelgeuse inspecting him while saying something he could no longer hear as his eyes closed with one final thought:

"This body... really is pathetic."

"Hello, this is my first fanfic! English is not my first language, so I apologize if there are any mistakes. I translated it using ChatGPT."