Death comes when you least expect it.
From an unexpected place and with an unexpected timing.

In front of me there is a large-scale truck.

Time advances slowly. Everything I left behind begins to emerge in my mind only to disappear later.
Friends, employer and my professor from the university. That reminds me, I haven’t submitted my report yet…
And lastly everybody from the orphanage.
I never went through my mind that I would repaid everything they had done for me with my life insurance.

If it had been possible, I would have liked to live a life with more emotion.
When I thought so, I heard the voice of a kid laughing along with the sound of every bone in my body breaking,

When I regained my consciousness, I was in the middle of a forest…

I looked at my surroundings and then the sky.
Compared to the moon I know, this was shining and felt like it was bigger.

The trees lit by the moonlight were strangely big. How many times my height? There are only giant trees growing in the surroundings.

Is this the world after death?
According to legend of the Sanzu River I should be able to see a garden filled with flowers as a far my eye can see, but such a scenario is not reflected in my eyes.
For this to be the world after death, surely it’s pitiful.

What on the earth is this…

Suddenly I felt something bitter inside my mouth.
When I spit it out, I realized it was grass.

Why the hell I was eating something like that?
The next moment, a strong hunger attacks me.

Dizziness and weariness, a feeling of fatigue attacked my whole body.

I will die if I don’t eat something…

I started looking for any kind of food that could be eaten.
Mushrooms or acorns, at this point I don’t care what it is, anything is fine.
Something that I can put in my mouth.

Suddenly, a big centipede entered my field of vision.
Usually, I would have screamed and escaped by now, but for some reason I kept looking at it.
If you look at it carefully, it would seem that it had a lot of muscle.
If I’m not mistaken, the poison was in the mouth, so if I do something about it, I would be able to eat it…
……
……

Let’s eat it.

My first centipede tasted disgusting.

「That reminds me, will I be okay despite the parasites and the like?」
I began to worry after filling my stomach with the centipede.

I lost my reason for a moment at that time…
So this is what it means to become an idiot for lack of food?
Not that I know how to light a fire, either way I had to eat it raw.
By how I chew it, everything should be fine, yes, all good. Perhaps.

I would have starved to death if my brain had been working halfway.
I have no choice but to start praying whether the parasites exist or not.

「I’m thirsty…」
I started to walk wishing for water…
I want to remove the taste of the centipede from my mouth in this instant.

When my body feels like it walked plenty, a brook appears.
Though my brain tells me to not drink unboiled water, but it can’t be helped that I don’t know how to start a fire.

「I came back to life…」
Indeed, water is important.
At glance you can see that the water is transparent, so it should be free of parasites. Perhaps.

I looked at the water of the brook.
There it was my face reflected by the moonlight…
……
……
……

Who is this?

A emaciated gray-haired child was reflected in the water’s surface.

??????

Wait, wait a second, probably this water surface is making a mistake. Surely, the light reflection may sometimes go wrong.
I escape from the absurd reality that exists in front of me.

I timidly touch my cheeks.
I noticed that my bones were visible.
It’s not like I was fat, but neither I was skinny enough for my bones to protrude.

The next thing I try to do is to pull my hair. The hair is gray.
I was a typical Japanese, so I was certain that my hair was black but…

Still, this is the reality.
In other words. This is that thing. The famous one.

「Reincanation…」

I looked up at the night sky.
There was a certain moon twice as big as the moon from Earth shining in the night sky.

1. N/a