The golden morning light sliced through the blinds, casting thin, prison-like bars across the crib. Within them, a thirty-day-old infant let out a long, heavy sigh that carried the weight of a mid-life crisis.
'A whole month,' he thought, staring blankly at the ceiling fan. A whole damn month of monotony. If he had to look at that spinning plastic mobile for one more second, he was going to lose it.
The struggle was real. He had the mind of an adult, the existential dread of a philosopher, and the motor skills of a baked potato.
'My existence has been reduced to a cycle of chores I didn't ask for. I sleep, and sleep, and sleep. I'm fed against my will, though, if I'm honest, that might be the only part I, cough, well, never mind. But the indignity? The absolute peak of it? Being forced to poop against my will. Simply pathetic.'
'I used to think boredom was a choice, or a lack of imagination. Now I know better. After months of this, "boring" is a pathetic understatement. It's a leprosy of the soul. It's a quiet, white-room kind of madness where every second is a heavy, leaden weight you're forced to carry.'
The only sliver of light in this month of hell was the steady drip of his past lives gaining clarity. The memories were still fragmented, but they had sharpened enough for him to finally grasp what the interface panel meant by a Sage Body.
He didn't have the full picture yet, but he knew it was linked to an old story from his past, an anime called Naruto. He remembered the fundamentals: chakra, the potent energy created by fusing spiritual and physical power.
It was the only logical explanation for why his bedridden body was suddenly changing. His eyesight was sharpening, his memory was becoming clearer.
Even without knowing much about this 'sage body' and this supernatural power known as chakra, he could already tell it had a lot of potential.
For weeks, he had been trying to sense the energy within him. If his own body produced it, he should, theoretically, be able to command it. Yet, despite his persistence, he hadn't made a shred of progress.
It was like trying to catch smoke with his bare hands, elusive and totally silent. He didn't even know where to start. He had the tool but no instructions on how to use it. He had the car but not the key.
Constant failure was a bitter pill. He had always prided himself on his intellect and his knack for solving the unsolvable, never expecting to be brought to his knees so early in the game.
Still, a thought lingered. Perhaps the chakra's silence wasn't a failure, but a safeguard. It could be his own body subconsciously shielding him from a power he wasn't ready for.
Perhaps chakra manipulation simply had an age floor he had yet to reach. Whatever the barrier, he would find a way to break it eventually. He had the time in abundance.
Another month bled into the next, a soul-crushing cycle of eating, sleeping, and "doing the deed," all while wrestling with a chakra source that remained stubbornly out of reach. It was a mind-scrambling loop of zero progress.
The only thing keeping him sane was his clearing vision. His world no longer ended a few feet away. Now, he could finally map his surroundings.
He confirmed his theory by looking at the youthful faces of his parents, and he spent hours scouring the picture frames on the walls, searching for any scrap of information that could tell him exactly where he was, and more about his new family.
Bruce sighed, a heavy sound for such a small body. His father, David, bounced him with the panicked, white-knuckled focus of a man defusing a bomb.
David was trying so hard to get fatherhood "right" that he'd forgotten how to just be a person, and Bruce was already exhausted for both of them.
"He's sighing again," David said, peering down at him with mild concern. "You think that's normal?"
From the kitchen came the rhythmic clatter of utensils and the soft hiss of something frying. His mother's voice floated in, warm and amused.
"Babies sigh, David. It's not a sign he's contemplating taxes," Lily said, rolling her eyes as she stirred a pot on the stove.
Bruce blinked slowly, his tiny chest hitching. Bold of you to assume I'm not, he thought, internally amused by his father's suspicion.
David shifted him slightly, holding him up like a questionable artifact. "It's just… he does it a lot. Like he's disappointed in us."
Oh, I am, Bruce thought, his expression remaining impressively blank. But we'll circle back to that once I can actually hold up my own head.
Lily killed the heat on the stove and exhaled a heavy, exasperated sigh of her own. She marched over, rescued Bruce from his father's clumsy grasp, and tucked him against her shoulder. Her soft, caring smile almost made Bruce's stern resolve falter.
She brushed a thumb over his cheek. "What's with the serious face, hmm? You look like you're plotting world domination."
"That's what I'm saying!" David insisted, hovering nearby. "He looks at me like he knows things."
Lily ignored David entirely, her world narrowing down to the tiny, stern face in her arms. Her smile softened, blooming with a fresh wave of maternal warmth.
After cooing over him for what felt like hours, his mother finally handed him to his father before retreating to the kitchen to finish dinner.
"I'll figure you out one day," David murmured, his expression uncomfortably intense for a conversation with an infant. Bruce started to huff in exasperation but caught himself. Best not to act too mature just yet. He settled into his father's arms as the man reached for the remote.
With a few clicks, the screen flickered to life. The news anchor was mid-sentence, breezing through a fluff piece, when she suddenly froze, her hand darting to her earpiece as her professional mask slipped.
The broadcast cut abruptly. The upbeat theme was replaced by a breaking news graphic, followed by shaky, live footage of the world's newest sensation: Omni-Man.
He was a blur of motion against a collapsing high-rise, diving into the billowing dust and emerging seconds later with survivors in tow.
It was the kind of spectacle that polarized the world in an instant, sparking a chaotic mix of awe, scrutiny, and devotion. As the camera struggled to track his blinding speed,
"That's definitely not normal," he thought. He stared at the screen, unable to believe what he was seeing. It broke every rule of science he had learned in his first life.
The hero on the news looked like something from a storybook he barely remembered. For a second, he was stunned, but then his face went back to its usual calm, cold look. After all, he had already died and come back to life in a new world.
Compared to his own reincarnation and the strange interface in his head that gave him magic energy, a man in a cape was the easy part. A superhero was the least of his worries.
As the footage played on, he found himself holding his breath. It took a moment of stillness to realize his heart was racing, just a fraction faster than normal, a flutter so slight he almost missed it himself.
The answer settled into place as he stared. He noticed the sudden tension in his frame and realized his body was reacting for him. His subconscious had already spotted what he was only just beginning to understand.
Somewhere in his locked-away memories, this 'superman' existed. Even if he couldn't recall the face, his subconscious did, and that was enough to send his heart into a sudden, frantic rhythm.
He let out another sigh, drawing his father's focused scrutiny. He ignored the heavy stare. There was little he could do about his body's involuntary reactions, not until the fog in his mind cleared enough to give him some actual context.
For now, he was stuck in the repetitive loop of infancy, trying to make sense of the strange energy humming through his veins.