Wounds of the past

"Ugh! why am I the one who has to carry this bastard?!" grumbled Isla.

Isla was a young man in his mid twenties with short, disheveled blond hair, brown eyes and a haggard face.

He was the youngest member of Grimm's band until Sol had joined.

That brat irked him in so many ways.

He didn't know what Grimm was thinking allowing the useless kid into the group.

If Isla had his way, he would have sold the boy into slavery for some good coin.

"Tch!" He clicked his tongue in annoyance.

He thought the boy would have died quickly in this war, how the weakling had survived was completely beyond him.

It was as if lady luck was smiling on the damned boy.

And, now he was tasked with carrying the dead weight—both literally and figuratively.

'Whatever, sooner or later the brat will die, even if he doesn't, Grimm will eventually sell him off since he's completely useless to us.'

"Aww... You pretend as if you aren't thrilled. Didn't you want to sleep with him the first time you laid eyes on him? Who knew you had such peculiar tastes." One of Grimm's men teased, causing the rest to burst out in laughter.

"Shut up! I thought he was a girl!" Isla shouted, indignant.

Sol had the soft, delicate features of a girl and when he first tried to join the mercenary group, his flowing, long hair only added to the illusion.

After joining, Sol cut hair to shoulder-length, but not before Isla had made the huge error.

It was an unfortunate mistake on Isla's part, one that his comrades still refused to let go.

"Oh, I'm sure you did, but just know that we support you—no need for you to hide your true feelings from us."

"Shut up!" Isla snarled, but their laughter kept ringing out in the air.

Isla gritted his teeth in annoyance. Ever since Sol had come to this mercenary band, he had become the laughing stock of the group.

'Fucking bastard...'

***

"Mmh..."

Yōta woke up from his sleep, his mind was still hazy, as though a fog was preventing him from thinking clearly.

"Ugh..."

A dull pain throbbed in his head, making him wince. The pain from the migraine hadn't fully disappeared yet.

Something didn't feel right with him as he blinked until his vision became clear.

It was as if there were two consciousnesses within him.

It felt different from before, it no longer felt like he was looking at someone else's memories; it felt like he had actually lived them—as if they actually belonged to him.

'Who am I... Am I Yōta or Sol?'

The dual memories left him confused. It didn't feel like Sol's memories were any less his own than the ones he lived on Earth.

If anything, he felt like he had lived through both of them for years.

Now he wasn't sure whether he was Yōta and had reincarnated into the body of Sol, or if he was Sol and Yōta's memories had somehow become a part of his own.

He placed a hand on his head trying to piece things together. He was the seventeen-year-old named Yōta... and he was apparently Sol, as well, with fourteen years' worth of memories from living in a small village on the southern border of Vardia, the southernmost part of the Pleiadean empire.

'Oh, that's right... I wasn't actually playing video games...'

The memory he had before of playing video games on his computer just before reincarnating was actually from over a year before his death.

He had been murdered, stabbed to death multiple times.

He shook his head, flicking away the memories of the events that led to that painful demise. He didn't even want to think about it.

Yōta—or Sol—surmised that the memory of playing games on his computer was simply the last thing he could remember from Yōta's life at that point because his memories were so fragmented.

As his head cleared, the memories of both lives gradually became less and less confusing, the two distinct memories and personalities seemingly blending into one.

"Hey, you brat! If you're awake, then get the fuck off!" Isla yelled, sending Sol out of his reverie.

Yōta immediately got off, landing his boots on the snowy ground as soon as he realised who had been carrying him.

Isla... Sol hated this man. If anything, he wanted to be as far away from Isla as the man wanted to be from him.

The casual way Isla had considered rape when he first saw him made Sol's blood boil.

Not even Rurik—the group's man-whore was that depraved.

Despite his promiscuity, Rurik always ensured his partners were willing. Isla on the other hand was pure scum.

Now, every time he saw Isla, he was reminded of what had been done to Rona.

Isla tried to say something further, but Sol quickly moved away from him and ignored him. He didn't have the energy for another one of the childish man's tirades.

They still hadn't reached Arn yet, the small town they had been hired to fight for in the war.

Sol's breath came out in white puffs of clouds as he looked at flock of birds soaring gracefully in the sky.

He closed his eyes as the terrible events of the last two weeks played through his mind.

While he was in the forest gathering herbs for his sick mother, Rona, raiders had attacked and set his village ablaze.

He returned, greeted by the sight of the burning houses and blackened corpses, their faces frozen in agony.

Sol searched frantically, but no one had survived the inferno.

He rushed through the burning village towards Rona's cottage, which he saw in the distance unharmed.

Relief flooded into his heart.

But as soon as he opened the door, his heart shattered.

Rona's lifeless eyes were staring back at him.

Her body lay crumpled on the floor, her clothes torn to shreds and her neck callously cut open.

His entire world came crashing down in that moment.

He screamed out in pain unable to accept the cruel and senseless way she had been taken from him.

Sol had never even called her "mother" once, despite her insistence.

And now she was gone, Sol would never see her loving smile ever again, never be embraced in the warmth of her arms ever again.

She was gone and there was nothing he could do about it.

Sol had always been a gentle soul, the type of person who wouldn't even hurt a fly.

But on that day, he swore in his heart that he would find the men who did this and make them pay.

All the adults in the village had been killed, but most of the children were nowhere to be seen, including his sister Rhea.

Sol figured they had been captured and taken away by the raiders.

He searched for clues and found the faint footprints of the village's attackers in the snow, along with those of the children they had in tow.

And so Sol followed them, trudging through the winter storm, desperate to find his sister.

But by the next morning, he had lost the footprints in the snow.

Apart from the horrifying sight of the occasional bodies of the village's children he would stumble upon, frozen in the snow, he had no other clues on how to find them.

He had no money either, and an aimless, helpless orphan like him would be easy prey for any slavers in the town or city he stumbled into.

That was how Sol met Grimm's men mid-way through his journey in the woods.

He asked to join them only so he travel safely with them. He offered to do their laundry, tend their gear, cook their meals and carry their luggage—whatever chores he could manage to help with.

But Grimm refused him outright, making it clear that Sol would either fight with them or forget about joining them.

To make matters worse, he didn't have a choice in the matter. Grimm was going to drag him along and sell him off in the next town the moment he refused.

That was how Sol had ended up joining Grimm's mercenary group and fighting in that crazy war.

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[A/N]

From now on, it's no longer Yōta, it's now Sol.

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