II. Reincarnation

(I-it’s painful…)

“! ”＃＄％＆’(”

“｜～＝)(’＆％＄”

It’s stifling, my body seems like it’s being squeezed, too.

What happened?

Ah, that’s right. I died in a train accident.

No, does this pain I’m feeling means I’m still alive?

Did I survived!?

The tightening feeling on my head loosened.

I can’t open my eyes. And I still can’t breath.

“＃％％＆’％’(＆)”

It’s the voice of a young man.

I feel like it was a voice that came from somewhere far away.

Was he someone who was involved the same train accident?

The tightening on my body also disappeared.

I felt someone put their hands on the area between my shoulder and chin and then I was pulled towards the direction of my head.

What!? The heck!? Is this some kind of treatment!?

I can’t open my eyes. And I still can’t breath.

It’s painful.

Then my body was enveloped with hot water. Is it a bath?

(I-it hurts!)

“Geho, gebuo.”

I was able to breathe with the steam.

What? It tastes like blood.

“Gebo, Gehe.”

I was able to breathe but I somehow vomitted blood or some liquid in my mouth.

“＞’＃)＆！”＆＃＃％？”

It was a middle-aged woman’s voice. I can’t see her so I am not really certain whether she really is middle-aged.

“＄？％, ’(＃＆’＃＆～＃”？”

It’s the voice of the young man I heard some time ago.

(This is… was I not treated yet? Did I vomit blood?)

“＞％, ％＄＄, ＃”％！!　 ＃”＄＃＄！!”

I… what the h.e.l.l is happening to me?

“％＄＄”, ’＝＆＝, ＃％＝～＆！!”

It is still painful. Are they still waiting for the triage order?

(Oi! Are you going to save me!? What hospital is this?)

“Uge! Ugya, ugyaaa!? Ugyaaaaa?”

(Eh? I can’t talk?)

“Ugoa? Ubyaaa?”

“”＋, ＊？｝＆！, ￥＾－・, ＊：(’, ；＝％”

This nurse (?), what are they saying?

Talk in j.a.panese!

“＃”＄”＃＄, ０－＆。”＃＄＃：, ；＊】＆％！　＃＄＆”！”

(d.a.m.n, what’s happening?)

“Ugya! ugyaugyaaaaa?”

I didn’t have any critical injury. Even the pain on my shoulder from being hurled disappeared, too.

Also, how do I say this? I somehow know why I can’t talk properly. I became a newborn baby. Things were difficult to see when I opened my eyes as if I had severe astigmatism, but I somehow understood.

After groping my whole body with my hands, I poked hard on my chubby arm using a pudgy little finger. I can’t move my body well but it doesn’t mean my movements are inhibited. I also don’t feel any pain. I can bring my hand before my eyes and examine it however I can not get up. I can’t also toss about.

No matter how hard I try, this body doesn’t have any strength at all. Is it because I am a baby that my physical strength is nonexistent? I got this impression when I saw my hand. I made an effort to move my body as much as possible but I can’t summon any strength properly and I feel like I’m just wiggling around.

A man looks at me and appears to have started talking. Either way, I have the impression that those words I heard sometime ago are foreign in nature. I made a great effort to talk but I can’t move my vocal chords properly so I can only let out something like ‘agwa’ or ‘hogwa’. Could it be that I was born with a disability?

“％－＆, ＊；＊；, ％％＝＃。＞”＝＾￥＆％＄：)＃”＆％”

s.h.i.+t, don’t hold me in your arms you stranger! Your palm is hard and it’s painful! I tried to complain. I cried violently when I can’t seem to control these feelings of anger.

“Ugya, Ugyaaaaaaaa!!”

Ah, d.a.m.n it! It isn’t painful to the extent that it’s unbearable. I just want to communicate to this person one way or another.

Probably because it’s been three months, I understood various things.

1. It was likely that I’ve been reincarnated. With my memories intact.

2. The place I got reincarnated in is a foreign country. Is it Europe?

I’m certain that they are not talking in English. It’s not German or French either so it’s a country I don’t know (somewhere I’m not well-acquainted with).

East Europe or Northern Europe, otherwise it’s possibly Spain or Portugal in Western Europe.

Based on the a.s.sumption that I was reborn immediately after I died, I get the feeling that it’s on South judging from the season and climate.

It’s possibly somewhere near Mexico.

However, some of the nouns were common. What the heck is their language?

3. From the kinds of furnis.h.i.+ngs in the house, my conjecture is that it’s not an advanced country.

I can’t find any electrical appliances.

How can they not have even a radio?

It may be a small developing country independent from the Eastern Europe’s former Soviet Union.

Incidentally, the house is made of wood and as far as I can see the floor is also wooden. There is nothing like a tatami mat.

The window isn’t gla.s.s and is being propped open only with the support of a stick from under its bottom shutter.

The window is closed at night by removing the stick holding it up.

They had no gla.s.s windows but they have gla.s.s for tableware.

4. They get up everyday just a little before sunrise and start preparing breakfast.

The preparations for dinner start as the sun sets and finishes just as soon as it becomes dark, a lamp would be lit as they ate and then they would retire to bed.

Oh, it seems like I’m only given lunch. I don’t know the menu because it’s not similar to baby food.

There’s no electricity so life is extraordinarily hard.

5. There are five members of the family excluding me.

I see all of them every day though I should mention later that this is not the exact number of people.

6. My father’s work is a mystery.

He seems like he goes somewhere after taking breakfast and then returns for lunch, but after eating lunch, he doesn’t come back until evening.

For the time being, where is this place? I still don’t know the number of rooms in the house. I’ve only seen my parent’s bedroom and the living room-c.u.m-dining room. I’ve seen other doors but I can’t stand by myself yet so I’m mostly confined to the bed.

No one looks after me except when my mother breastfeeds me, my diaper needs changing or when I change clothes.

Also, it’s a serious matter, but I can’t control my emotions for some reason. I cry if I can’t endure it when I become hungry, the uncomfortable feeling when I wet myself also makes me cry. I’m a baby no matter how you look at it, but the reality is I’m already in my mid-40’s so I can’t really think like that. I become anxious when I think about what would happen to me. And the feeling of anxiety also makes me cry.

As a matter of course, I don’t just cry. It’s not amusing when my older brother and sister tries to humor me with strange faces, but I feel happy for some reason and laugh with a squeal. And then after a while, I get crushed by anxiety and cry loudly again. Am I demented?

Half a year had pa.s.sed in the meanwhile, and I’ve furthermore confirmed various things.

1. Though my emotional control is still a current problem, I’ve became accustomed to it and progressed to a certain extent.

I am now able to control one big surge of emotions out of two times accurately.

This is wonderful.

2. Crawling is now possible for me.

I can’t stand up yet since I still can’t balance my body properly.

I get the sense that I’m similar to a bipedal walking toy with a broken balancer.

However, I feel like it becomes better the more I get used to it.

3. My comprehension of the language advanced to some degree.

I still can’t p.r.o.nounce really well probably because I can’t use my vocal chords properly, but I think I can quite understand them.

The syntax itself isn’t that much different from j.a.panese.

I don’t have enough confidence concerning the changes in prepositional and adverbial particles as well as the changes in conjunctions and verbs, but I feel like I’ve come to understand the contents of their conversations roughly.

4. There is a rapid increase in the information I have due to the development of my language comprehension.

To start with, my name is Al. Please tell me it’s lie, B*rnie. [Note: Reference from Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket, protagonists rookie pilot Bernie and elementary school student Al].

My father’s name is Hegard. His muscles are amazing. He has a body similar to a professional athlete.

My mother is Shal. A beautiful woman with well-shaped b.r.e.a.s.t.s. But I feel no s.e.xual desire towards her. Have I lost my vigor?

Then the maid Myun whom I previously thought to be my eldest sister. She comes to work in the morning and goes home by evening. She has no day-off so it’s like she’s a blue-collar employee in a black company.

My older brother is Farne, or is it Fan? He’s called different names by different people. It’s probably a nickname. He’s a young boy.

My older sister is Mill. She’s a young girl.

The one I thought to be my uncle, but is probably my father’s subordinate (?) is Judd. He calls everyone with honorifics except for Myun, so he gives off the impression of a subordinate.

Additionally, several other people come in front of our house but I haven’t remembered their names yet. I do not yet know their faces since they haven’t entered inside.

Incidentally, I do not know my family name yet. There’s obviously a reason for this. No one in the family usually calls each other by their surname.

6. The place I live is a village? Or perhaps a town? It’s Bakddo (バークッド). I heard it’s Bakddo Shun. I do not know whether this Shun (シュン) means village, town or city. I’m certain that this place’s name is Bakddo since they usually just call it by that name.

I think it’s probably not the country’s name. I haven’t heard of a country like that and it’s not like it’s really necessary to say the country’s name so frequently.

Most nouns are common so I wish that this place is common, too.

7. Perhaps, they raise chicken several hundred meters from the house.

I hear them cluck every morning.

Is it called kukkuduuduruduu [Note: j.a.panese Version] or c.o.c.k-a-doodle-doo [Note: English Version] in this country…?

Well, it’s doesn’t really matter.

I forgot to say this, but I was born in winter. Afterwards, I’ve welcomed four seasons that obviously doesn’t just happen in j.a.pan, so almost a year had gradually pa.s.sed. I’m probably somewhere in the Northern Hemisphere provided I was reincarnated immediately.

It’s now possible to control my emotions recently. I can stand up and walk now but only for a short time, probably because I don’t have enough muscle strength. I can also p.r.o.nounce words if they include several vowels that matches those in j.a.panese. Let’s put together the new things I’ve understood a little .

1. The emotional aspects I can’t control rapidly decreased.

However, I still have a disposition of running out of control when I feel strong emotions.

For instance, I don’t have any problems about feeling hungry but I quickly exceed the limits of my self-control so I cry loudly to call out my mother or Myun when it goes on for an hour.

In addition, I can endure it to a certain extent when I fall over but I easily approach my limit and cry out the instance my head hits against something. In my previous life, I get watery eyes if its painful but not to the extent that I bawl my eyes out.

I simply don’t have enough margin of control over my emotions and self-control.

This isn’t just my imagination, but this body suitable for my age seems to have dragged along my mentality, notwithstanding the knowledge I gained from being reborn.

2. I can now stand up, walk and unsteadily run.

There’s always someone by my side (either my mother, the maid Myun, or my brother and sister) since I’m still an infant so I can’t go outside yet.

Still, I am able to roughly understand the structure of the house.

The house is a wooden two-story building but the second floor might as well be an attic. What’s inside that room is a mystery.

As for the first floor, there’s the living-c.u.m-dining room of a little over 10 tatami (1 tatami ~ 1.53 sq.m), the kitchen of about 4 tatami, my parent’s bedroom and mine of approximately 8 tatami, then three other rooms of about 6 tatami. There’s also a nursery and as for the remaining one, is it for receiving guests? Is that a parlor room?

The doors of the rooms are located in the hallway that stretches from the front door.

There’s a restroom but it something like a pit toilet.

There’s no bathroom. They appear to subst.i.tute bathing by filling the tub with hot water, and wiping the body with a cloth.

3. I’ve almost learned the language.

There are six vowels, but it can be said that learning is easy grammatically because j.a.panese is almost similar.

I think that I can almost certainly understand what the conversations between my family members mean.

I can talk but it’s with difficulty.

The language has a big similarity among the common nouns in English.

My family seems to think I’m a genius since I started to talk, though falteringly, even though I haven’t reach one year old yet.

I’m vigilant about being treated as a freak or believed to be possessed by an evil spirit so I kept silent about being born again through reincarnation.

In the first place, It’s common sense to think reincarnation and transmigration of souls are unbelievable. Even if I admitted that and talk about j.a.pan, I am already dead and the funeral service is finished, too.

It will only be troublesome if the government of this country reports about it to j.a.pan.

It’s true that I truly want to meet Miki and my parents, but I’m already dead.

If I survived by any chance then it would really be a problem.

There will be two men having the same memory and identical personality, so there might be a dispute over which of us is the genuine one.

I dismissed that thought, if I was reincarnated with my memories of “this me”, then “the me in this life” will walk above with that advantage.

4. The geography as well as the social condition of Bakddo makes it most likely a village. My father is probably like a village chief or mayor since he’s treated similar to a feudal lord.

The main livelihood in the village is agriculture and it seems like they also hunt to a certain extent.

And then the thing that surprised me the most is… No, let’s talk about that later.

Even after this summation, a lot of things still astonish me but I decided that I’ll talk about those things in detail later when the surprise subsides.

5. Their unit of measurement is most likely the metric system.

Though my intuition tells me it’s the metric system, I’m not really sure about the details since there are no accurate scales like a measuring ruler.

It’s inconvenient so I’ll just think of it as the metric system. The units and p.r.o.nunciation is approximately the same, too.

6. Concerning Mathematics, they adopt the decimal system.

If it’s just simple arithmetic then my parents can do it, but my older siblings who have low academic training, appears to be weak in calculation.

It’s somewhat difficult to consider in j.a.pan.

I know that multiplication and division are not possible for someone who just entered primary school, but how is it that they can’t even count the numbers in order?

For the time being, the fact that I’ve confirmed it’s been a year since I was reincarnated is of no importance. That’s all.

I’ll talk about the important things from here on.

1. There’s a possibility that this isn’t the modern era.

Or perhaps I should say, the possibility is high.

First, I heard that the name of this country is Ronbelt Kingdom (ロンベルト王國).

I haven’t heard about a kingdom among the countries that separated and became independent from the former Soviet Union.

I made a conjecture from the standard of living and miscellaneous goods.

If this isn’t a small country in Africa, could this be a time slip?

2. In the Ronbelt Kingdom, the King rules the country through feudalism.

The n.o.bles under the King are given a part of the land, except those among the territories under the King’s direct control, which they rule as their own dominion.

The Bakddo Village is a part of Marquis Webdoss’ territory.

I heard that my father is more or less the feudal lord who enforces policies. So that means I’m a n.o.ble.

My older brother would succeed the family. My older sister will probably marry to another family, but how does this country handles a second son? I’ll probably be treated as a hanger-on in this era. It’s still early, but I have to prepare some countermeasures.

3. Lastly, it’s the taxation.

Bakddo Village’s main industry is cultivating wheat through agriculture.

Of course they also grow other vegetables but their main product is wheat. The farmers pay my father 60% of their harvest for tax. My father seems to give 60% of that to another senior feudal lord (I do not know whether he’s Marquis Webdoss or not).

Taking 60% of the revenue is absurd! I thought of that for a moment, but this isn’t the modern era so it’s natural. If I think about it, it’s enough for my father to receive just 24% of the village’s gross production. [Note:(100×60%)-((100×60%)x60%)=24]

In fact, he doesn’t get as much as 24%.

The maintenance of the village’s infrastructures is the responsibility of the Lord so he provides the expenses by himself.

I do not know the village’s population (but it’s probably not that big) so I also do not know the total revenue, but I can’t say we live a comfortable life. I mostly guessed this from our furniture and meals.

Anyway, it’s been a year since I tried not to stand out so much by being quiet in order to gather information. If they press some questions, I may blurt out something carelessly. It will be a problem if they suspect me.

It’s absolutely necessary to make sure that the development is not that early — at best, they can understand my words even if they are baby talk and I can toddle quite well to the extent that only makes me seem like a child with a great promise.

What, you say? I’m still a year old, I can’t do anything even if I hurry up. I still have a lot of time to gather information, if this isn’t the modern era then it’s necessary for me to exercise and train to improve my physical strength. It’s fine to do it slowly.

I lived by repeatedly by being cautious throughout the year after I was born, the events here are written according to their sequence. Like this, I continued to leisurely do some information gathering and summarizing afterwards for several days.