Aki.
That's my name.
The one my parents had given to me.
Supposed I was?
I grew up with a roof over my head and a family that cared without needing a reason. We were not rich, miles away from it. My father ran a small butchery in the neighborhood, something handed down from his father. He's quiet, always smiles, always reeked of booze. My mother worked alongside him. She's loud, quick to scold, and often unfair. Still, she cared. It showed more in the things she did than in what she said.
I never thought of them as lovers. Not like the ones on TV. To me, they were just two adults sharing responsibility. Maybe affection was never something they knew how to show.
I had a younger brother. A few years behind me. Stubborn. Shy. Smart enough to be annoying. He didn't talk much about how he felt, but he acted when it mattered. That was his way. He was quite similar to our mother, something I often teased him about. He hated it, especially since the two of them were always at each other's throats.
I was not anyone special. Just a nobody born into a normal family. A person with a timer on his life. That was basically me. Confined, my world shrinking to the walls of a hospital room. Waiting. Somehow lasting for more years than expected.
That's who I am. That's my life.
Not a noble. Certainly not born in a knight family. Nothing grand.
One thing we could both relate to, and understood too well: life never treats everyone the same.
The place.
The body.
Those memories...
None of it belonged to me.
If I'm him…
Then I've transmigrated into another world. Haven't I?
Transmigration. A trope I was too well familiar with from anime, novels, and games. One of the most famous tropes in storytelling. You could say, a story about giving second chances.
For someone like me, a second chance felt too unreal.
I'd dreamt this before. Many times.
But was this real?
Dreaming?
Hallucinating?
The pain from earlier answered that question.
This was real.
I looked down at my hand. It felt like I was wearing someone else's body. Every movement borrowed, yet oddly natural.
Torn between excitement and fear.
That fact alone should've been enough to shatter any of my current understanding about everything—yet, it wasn't. Just as I was about to start adjusting to this reality...
This wasn't like the fragments of memories or a trick of my imagination.
And whatever it was, the undeniable proof of this new reality, it felt like only the beginning of what was about to come.
A wolf of light took shape before me. Its body shone brightly, as if it was carved under the moonlight. Lastly, its crystal-blue eyes formed and locked into mine, piercing through my well-being. Its form was see-through, like a hollow mist, yet each outline burned with flickers of blue fire, dancing along its edges.
I lowered my gaze immediately.
The magic circle is real. The first thought that crossed my mind.
This isn't a dream, I knew that for a fact. And yet, a part of me wishes it to be.
This isn't some leftover memory.
This is happening right now.
When I'm at the point of trying to piece everything together. And of all times, of course, it had to happen now.
I clutched my chest, gasping for breath. Cold sweat streamed down my face, soaking my hair and clothes.
In desperation, I dug through the memories that's not mine. Faces, fragments, half-formed thoughts, grasping for anything—just anything helpful, an explanation what was in front of me. A reason. Anything to hold on to.
I'm scared.
Spirit... My mind whispered to me.
What's a spirit? A ghost?
Everything was a haze; there was nothing.
No... not nothing.
Images flashed.
A hand. Was it mine? No. It was someone else.
They were talking to me in a warm, slightly friendly voice with a smile stretched across their face, too wide, too white.
I cannot remember their features; all of it was blurred and indistinct.
"Child." It echoed off the walls, causing my entire body to jerk at the sound.
"What are you?" The voiced slammed into the room.
A cold shiver ran down my back.
Neither male nor female, nor even human. Its voice bled from every direction at once. And yet… there was no malice in it. No threat. Just a strange, almost gentle curiosity, like it was studying me out of interest rather than intent. That, somehow, unsettled me more.
I lifted my head slowly. The instant our eyes met, I gulped hard. The roof of my mouth immediately turned dry. I tried to open my mouth, yet my jaw refused so.
The wolf stood stock still, and its gaze remained unwavering, while the blue fire along its edges flared brighter.
The wolf stepped off the table. As its first step grazed the floor, an indescribable feeling rose within me. Then, in the second and third steps, it occurred to me, each step taken was noiseless, as if it were walking in the air.
My instinct screamed at me—get out. Louder than anything else in my head.
The wolf regarded me with its curious eyes.
I scrambled backward without thinking, scraping my palm across the floor in the process. Pain quickly flared through, but it barely registered. Fear swallowed it whole. All I could focus on was putting distance between us. Any distance at all.
My skin scraped because of it, a quick sting flaring through my hand, but I barely noticed. All I could focus on was putting distance between us. Any distance at all.
My vision blurred as I turned toward the door on my left. Escape was in sight, but my body wouldn't obey. It's within reach. Come on, work. Damn it.
A cold wind brushed past my neck. I froze. Instantly.
That was when I realized how close it was. Its muzzle hovered near my throat, close enough that I could feel its faint and cold breath. I did not move. I could not, even if I wanted to. Like someone had a gun pressed against my neck. Every muscle in my body tensed, even my thoughts screaming for me to stay still.
Then it began to circle me. Slow. Deliberate.
Blue flames shed from its body, grazing against my skin. There was no heat at all. Instead, a biting cold brushed against my skin.
Then it stopped before my face, with its unblinking gaze.
"Strange mortal… I shall not utter it thrice. What are you?"
The wolf leaned closer to me. It inhaled once, a low, deliberate sniff.
And then, suddenly—!
The shift was instant. Its body tensed, as its fur of light bristled, and it sprang back. The glow along its edges flared violently, as though the fire had been poured into its veins.
That curious, searching gaze was gone. Whatever it had smelled or sensed inside me had turned wonder into vigilance.
"This scent…" the wolf's voice rumbled, strained with disbelief. "Impossible… You reek of death. A stench that should not be carried by the living. Foul. Unclean."
It circled me once again, slower this time, like its movements suddenly became measured and analytical. Yet beneath it, there remained tension.
"And yet... You summoned me." Its words came like verdicts, "A carrios in human skin, calling the divine… You summoned me. Impossible. How?"
Its voice cracked. "To summon me... do you understand? A taboo."
The wolf paused, and its gaze sharp as a knife. Then it inhaled once. _"…Taboo."
The word dropped like a hammer.
I blinked. "Taboo? What are you talking about? Care to—"
The wolf's stare cut into me, dissecting me like prey under a scalpel. "You... and yet, you called me here. That should be impossible. That makes you impossible. The stench of death clings to your core like rot. You are a paradox that should not exist."
Its flames flared hotter, as if ready to erase me, rejecting me with pure hatred like its eyes want to vomit. The wolf's glow bristled, blue fire crackling across its fur. Its eyes blazed with murder, ready to strike. "Corrupting the order of all things. You should not exist."
Its growl deepened, claws scraping sparks across the floor, though it left no mark. "You are filth."
"Hold—Hold on! Wait a minute! Please, wait—!" I screamed, begging for my life as I slammed my back against the wall, as panic tore through me.
Give me a fucking breather for fuck sake!
Second chance my ass!
I'm the most unluckiest bastard alive!
The wolf lunged at me with its fangs bared and light trailing behind its tail.
"Aa—ah! Give me a second chance!" I threw my arms over my face and squeezed my eyes shut.
Shortly after, the entire room was suddenly enveloped in this eerie silence.
The wolf froze mid-leap, suspended in the air as if caught by something. Seeing its fangs mere inches away from my face made me tense up, nearly wetting myself because of it.
And then it appeared.
Something stepped through. I don't know where. Not from the door, the window, the light, nor the shadow. It simply existed, as if the page of reality had been torn and something had slipped between.
A shape stood between the wolf and me. It stood tall and still, its contour form... How do I put this? Not of this existence. My eyes refused to decide what it was, or perhaps struggled to comprehend.
At one glance, it resembled a man shrouded in a robe that seemingly blended itself into the air. At the next moment, its form dissolved into something I cannot put into words, like the room itself also can't decide where it began and ended.
The air fractured around it like cracks across glass, yet no sound followed. Watching it, it felt as though my eyes were playing with me.
The wolf's body convulsed violently, light shredding from its form. Its blue flames faded out into smoke, then into nothing. Its snark warped then stretched into silence.
The wolf's voice broke the silence, trembling yet sharp as if seeking something from the unknown. "Why..."
I couldn't breathe. I couldn't even blink. The world itself seemed to begin faltering before me.
The unknown thing didn't strike.
It simply unwrote the wolf.
Like a story ripped from the page, the glowing beast frayed into threads of light, each strand dissolving before it could even touch the ground. No blood. No sound. No trace.
And in the silence that followed, I felt it.
Not fear.
Not awe.
Something worse.
Recognition.
It was as if somebody revealed a door I should never have known existed. My body knew it before my mind did. Didn't know its name, yet the very core of my being whispered. End.
What's with my luck?
First, cancer. Now, in the second one, this!? Like, come on!
I just got here!
At least, give me a day or two!
This isn't some free trial experience, right?!
Defeated, my shoulders sank. I'm so done.
The figure lingered for a while. Then, without motion, without sound, it vanished, gone as though it never existed.
Then, faintly, a whisper carried on laughter flew past.
"Hellooo~!"
I snapped my head toward the sound.
For a brief moment, I saw a smile too wide for something so small, eyes gleaming with cross-shaped pupils that sparkled in violet and green. I blinked a few times and asked myself. *Must be dust, right?
And then it vanished. The silence that followed pressed down harder than before, the memory of that playful giggle lodged in my skull.