1 Reincarnation

My name is Issei Hyoudou. Or is it Hyoudou Issei? I'm still confused about Japanese names. Which should be odd. I'm eight years old. I've learnt and used Japanese for all of my life. I should be used to it. Except I'm not.

I'll explain myself first. I'm Hyoudou Issei. I'm eight years old. I live in Kuoh Town with my father, mother, and my big sister. I'm a 3rd year student in Kuoh Elementary School. I have brown hair and hazel eyes.

My father is Hyoudou Gorou. He has brown hair and brown eyes. He's an ordinary man, with an ordinary job at a nearby office. He's always a little tired, but it doesn't stop him from being kind and patient to my big sister and I.

My mother is Hyoudou Miki. She has brown hair and hazel eyes. She mostly stays at home, keeping the house clean and helping around whenever someone needs something.

I'm still confused on how much money my father is actually earning, but considering he's keeping us all afloat without my mother having to work, I'd say he's earning quite the payload.

My big sister is Hyoudoun Isane. With long brown hair and hazel eyes. She's 14 years old, and a 3rd year student in Kuoh Middle School. She's a bit of a rebel and hates studying, but she loves our family like there's no tomorrow. Although she likes patting me and messing up my hair every time we meet. It's both endearing and annoying.

My parents are always a little exasperated at how my big sister acts, but they love her all the same. I'm somewhat sure it was the aftereffect of losing their first child because of a miscarriage.

It feels a little weird to describe my family so succinctly, but the situation I'm going through is even weirder.

It happened a few days ago. I was going about my day when I tripped on the stairs down and smashed my forehead onto the floor. My mom quickly brought me to the hospital to see if I got hurt. Thankfully I came out fine.

But something happened. When I woke up, I remembered living another life, in a world so similar to this one. I lived through some odd sixty years, from crawling around as a baby, to growing up as an adult, to growing old, and eventually passing away.

I remembered being another person. I was a man in that other life. An ordinary man, with no passing achievements and no pressing desires. I worked during the day and relaxed at night. I had a girlfriend, but that fell through. I never ended up marrying in the end, and I retired silently when I became too old.

That was weird enough. Having sixty years be pushed into the head of an eight years old was not fun. And though I remembered who Hyoudou Issei was, I was worried I couldn't act the same.

I didn't need to worry, because I awakened something when I woke up. My memories of 'Hyoudou Issei' became painfully clear, and it took barely any acting to act as an eight year old boy.

I didn't consider it weird at first, but then I began receiving epiphanies. Every time I looked at my family, I'd get a sense of what they were thinking. I even sometimes heard their own thoughts seconds before they spoke it out loud.

And when I looked at objects, I'd get a flush of information through my head. About what materials they were made from, how it was made, who used it, what it was intended for, how long it had left before it degraded, and so much more. Even just looking at the grass outside made my head buzz with all sorts of information.

That was how I discovered that magic was a thing. I'd looked at a tree, and suddenly I knew that it was storing Primal Energy, drawn from the deepest parts of the planet. And when I looked at myself, I found out that my heart was pumping miniscule amounts of Mana through my veins.

Consequently, that was how I discovered what it was that changed. I'd looked at myself in the mirror, and I saw that my eyes had changed. Amber orbs had suddenly been replaced by sharp gold, surrounding a pupil that was too nearly rectangular in shape. And staring at my eyes in the reflection, a name formed in the back of my mind.

The Eyes of God.

I don't really know what that means. I tried staring at myself more and more, but nothing came from it aside from repeating the name in my head.

I also tried asking my big sister if she noticed something weird about my eyes, but she said that they weren't any different. Am I the only one capable of seeing my eyes? Or is it because she and my parents are 'normal humans'? Or is it because of this 'God' that my new eyes belonged to?

Whatever the case, I'm grateful. I'm not sure how I'll be able to explain these new eyes to my family.

That all aside, that's not important right now.

It's Sunday today, and the sun outside was blaring right through my window. I'm sitting in my room, rocking back and forth on my desk chair as I ponder over what to do. My eyes tell me a lot of things, but there's one constant that it screams constantly into my psyche;

This world is not safe.

The day before, my family had gone out to Kuoh Central Park like we always do. But as we were going home, my new eyes caught something hiding behind the sparse trees growing around the park. It was a monster of some kind, its body impossibly thin and contorted around the tree like a snake. It was staring at me and my family, and I could see the sheer overwhelming hunger it had with my eyes.

I'd quickly asked my parents to go home, and thankfully they obliged. The monster stopped glaring at us after we got far enough.

But it doesn't change the fact that monsters exist in this world. I don't know whether it actually was a monster or not; I didn't stare at it long enough to find out. But that thing wanted to eat me. To eat my family.

I've never really had a parent in my first life. My mother died giving birth to me. My father left me a couple years later. I'd never been adopted, and I was more focused on learning and graduating. Before I realized it, I was working my life away, living in an apartment on my own.

This time, I have a family. I have a mother, a father, and a big sister.

I won't let some monster take them.

But what to do? I'm just a normal kid. I continue rocking back and forth as I consider my options. I mean, I can train or whatever, but how would I even do that? I'm not a fighter, and watching anime doesn't count as learning.

The magic rushing through my veins could also be an option, but I don't even know how to begin with that. I can't touch it, and I don't want to explain to my mother why cutting myself open to touch some mystic energy was a good idea.

Which leaves Primal Energy.

I frown. It was the most present thing I've seen in the past few days. Grasses, trees, flowers; anything that was remotely alive seemed to contain it. Even I have some in my body, though it's so miniscule and hidden inside my heart. I stare down at my chest, staring at the small blob of white that pulsed together with my beating heart.

My eyes were quick to provide more information.

Primal Energy. The source of all life. During the earth's formation, it crashed into another proto planet. This sparked a chain reaction that eventually led to the formation of Primal Energy, stored and slowly pulled out from the core of Earth. All life born on Earth will be born from Primal Energy, and they will all return to it in time. It was the energy of life itself, a source of creations both healing and destructive.

I wince slightly as the stream of information finally ends. Is that normal? I hope not. I can just imagine walking before suddenly being blindsided by some burst of information and falling flat on my face.

Still, it exists in everything, huh? And it's a power capable of creating and destroying.

I turn to the potted plant sitting on top of my desk. My mother put it there a couple months before, saying something about 'keeping my room healthy'. It's a young amaryllis, still a few weeks before the flowers will begin to sprout. The leaves have grown long and wide though, and so I whisper a small apology as I pluck off one of its leaves.

And immediately I can see the Primal Energy inside the leaf begin to leak out from the broken stem, slowly fading out into the air in my room. I press a finger onto the leaking stem, and I stare in amazement as the Primal Energy almost seems to warp around my finger, sticking onto it like glue. Was it attracted to my skin because I'm alive?

Jokingly, I decide to 'allow' the Primal Energy to go into my body. And by that I mean constantly begging in my head for the intangible energy to somehow go through my skin.

I nearly yelp as the Primal Energy suddenly vanishes into my finger. And my surprise only builds as I feel a small shock of warmth rush through my body. My surprise nearly explodes when I realize that the warmth isn't going away.

Suddenly, a million synapses in my brain light up like christmas lights, and I grin as a new idea blooms inside my head.