1 A Rude Awakening

Suddenly waking up in a strange place, Ren finds that he has been transmigrated to the body of a young boy in highschool. The only problem though, is that this is the world of a novel he used to read, and the worst thing, this novel has a terrible ending.

. . .

In an old looking room with visibly deteriorated furniture, a boy lay on the ground with a streak of dried blood trailing down his cheek unto the floor. Why he was in that condition was unknown, but the television which remained switched on in that moment provided sufficient background ambience in place of silence in the dead of night.

Like an electric shock, the boy's body jolted forward as his body sat up. 

'Damn... This pain, this is more than just a headache, what happened?' He thought to himself as the midnight news continued in the background, the television providing the only light in the room.

After about three minutes passed, the unbearable headache faded quickly as if it was never there, and the boy gained enough composure to help himself to his feet.

From his breast pocket hung an identity card that read Ren Ashburn. Ren walked slowly through the small cramped room towards the toilet. 

Once he opened the toilet door, he bent his head above the basin, then he let open the tap for the water to rush over his head. He remained like that for a while, probably a couple minutes, before turning off the tap and looking at the mirror in front of him.

'No way... Did I really crossover into another world?'

. . .

Ren, before a few moments ago, was a normal young man in the modern earth who worked night shifts at a cafe while studying computer science at a federal university he only managed to get into.

In his free time when there were no customers, he would make use of the computer in the cafe to watch movies and anime, and when he couldn't use them, he would be on his phone reading manga and webnovels. There wasn't really much to his life than that. He was a pessimist who compelled himself with the belief that some people weren't just born lucky, and he put himself also in that category.

At the moment, he couldn't tell what had led to his death, as there was no 'floating in the void' stage for him, he simply went to sleep and woke up to a rude headache in another person's body.

'I always knew that parking out of that shitty apartment was the right move, but guess I delayed too much,' he thought to himself. Since it was raining heavily that night before he went to sleep, he speculated that he must have died in a building collapse.

"Heh, so unfortunate, can't cry over spilled milk, though."

To his surprise, the body of the person he now inhabited was also named Ren, but the surname was quite fancy, Ashburn.

Apart from the name on the ID, Ren also noticed that he had dried blood on the side of his face that went down his right cheek, but it actually seemed to come from his mouth as the metallic taste was becoming more present now that he noticed it. Maybe it was because it had stayed there for a while, it didn't leave a good taste in his mouth at all.

'I wonder what happened? I feel so weak.'

Ren felt that something was familiar as he looked at the name on the ID card, but then nothing came to mind after some quick seconds of think, so he dismissed the thought to focus on other things.

After washing his face and rinsing his mouth, Ren couldn't help but feel that he was actually quite handsome, and the short goldish looking blonde hair on his head did well to compliment his angular masculine face that appeared so dashing. His eyes looked golden and striking, which went well with his pale skin. Overall, he was a very attractive young lad that many ladies of all ages would trip off a cliff for. 

Exiting the toilet, he walked all the way to the front door where the light switch was. He was curious, so when he turned on the lights, he was shocked to see just how much blood he had lost. 

'Damn, so this is why I look so pale skinned and feel so weak?'

Just what exactly had caused him to vomit such an amount of blood was astonishing. 'It can't be from my mouth alone, this is just too much... Was I hit by someone?' He tried to figure out, but nothing came to mind. For some reason, the regular inflow of memories after one reincarnated into a different body was not happening, for now at least, he still believed it would come.

Though after examining his head, Ren found nothing, no cuts and no gushes. 

When he tried to figure out more about who he was though, to remember his past, Ren got an inflow of information as it broke into his head. It was not a painful experience like he had thought it would be, instead it just left him feeling lost for a moment. It felt like both memories from this life and his previous had mixed and become one. Once it was done, his eyes lit up gradually before falling back to a saddened state. He had figured out what caused the Ren in this world to die.

He actually swallowed an overdose of some drugs to end his life by himself and hit his head by the edge of the chair where a lone nail was sticking out, that was what caused the huge lose of blood, it was from that injury.

The reason for the suicide was because Ren had lost the woman whom he loved with all his heart that very night, and it happened before his very eyes. He couldn't take it and killed himself.

Anyway, that was not what was most shocking and eye opening for Ren. The surprise came when the name of the place and the type of world he was now in came to his mind...

'Wait, this can't be, right...?' No matter how he looked at it, everything seemed to point towards one direction, "did I really become a character in the very novel I used to read?"

Ren couldn't believe it, but once he paid attention to the news, he could hear what it was about.

-"Angel Aurelia has become the first student in the entire country to beat a B rank dungeon singlehandedly. Reports say that she has been granted an early graduation and will be joining the frontlines in months to come..."-

"This is even more unreal... Angel Aurelia? Isn't she the one who dies protecting the main character and his friends halfway through the novel? This is before the story officially begun then, but, I don't know how long in the past..." Ren calmed himself and took a seat to collect his thoughts first. He needed to get a complete grasp of the situation before any thing else.

'The fact that I am now in this world is not the problem, the problem is that the story never ended well, it was one of the worst endings I've ever read in my entire life.'