Chapter 1: Prologue – Truthful Transmigration of the Soul

I wanted to be a novelist. And an illustrator. And a game dev. Sometimes a paleontologist, maybe a historian, or if everything was cut short, then a politician or influencer. To be honest…Anything was fine.

But here I stand. Alone at an old lake ‘side. There wasn’t much to wear. A white and plain shirt, black trousers and flip-flops were fine, and almost all. The day was bright and hot; forming sweat droplets that fell between my eyes and the glasses’ rim. A cicada cries, setting up that perfect summer mood.

My trustworthy bag feels like it’ll tear apart at any given moment. It is older than my niece, and serves its duty diligently: carrying expensive pants needed for working, and a pair of sneakers that I forgot when were given to me…around middle-school? My feet were always small.

That’s me. A forgettable human.

Eating a popsicle was the only way I found to downplay the summer heart. Its flavor is nostalgic, tastes like…blue.

What am I? An overgrown child? 30 years’ worth of life and no dreams were accomplished. Maybe a child can do better. That is around what? Two shounen protagonists’ lifetime? At 30 Alexander the Great had conquered his known-world, and yet…Here I am.

The lake offered me an answer. Its water was still clear, even after those years, and there was I. A reflection that day by day grew farther away from the young boy that once came here to throw rocks. That boy has now turned into a skinny and overworked man. Oh! But not for long. Because he was now jobless too!

Nursing rich people’s dogs…What a fantastic career. They don't do much, and still they’re all troublesome. Sometimes it was fun, like comparing who had the prettiest poop.

It was Leo.

Even a job like that, however, was no place for a misfit like me. ‘It is not about you, ya see? It is all about budget, buddy!’ they said. An accountant’s backspace key governs most of our fates.

Staring at myself I see exactly what I am. A true dreamer. Someone that yearns to reach somewhere else, but never does. In my youth I even achieved my “fifteen minutes of fame”, but a reality check made its job, robbing everything that was built during that time. ‘It is okay, this’ll help you grow up, ya know? You’ll get back on it’. A decade had passed, and…Yeah.

“Hey, Glassy!” He yelled from the sidewalk. A boy, he was 10, maybe 11 if I remember right his birthday. The son of my first love, and he looked awfully like his mother. “Be careful! These docks are almost as old as you!”

“I’m fine, Regret!” That’s his nickname, given by me, obviously. You see I never confessed to his mother, and neither did she. We knew for certain that we liked each other, but mustering the strength to put it together was too difficult for two awkward high-schoolers. Then life made its magic and put us apart, and now the brat wasn’t mine.

“Old, huh…” I look back at myself in the reflection. “Am I that old?”

To him probably.

These docks were made around my elementary school years. Regret never got to see the lake without docks, or food stalls. The project that built to rejuvenate our neighborhood’s infrastructure. The mayor that approved that reform died last year, natural causes. So, it was old. Old enough that a kid would’ve never seen a world without them. It was, for Regret at least, always that way.

“Time, huh…” Yes, time. My archnemesis. The one concept I fought since my childhood, fending off anxiety and feeding hopes to the future. A divorce showed me early on that not even the unbreakable love of adults could last forever. In my teenage years there was that looming, ever present, impatience. I knew time was ticking, every second was slipping through my finger, serving other purposes that not my war against forsakenness. And becoming an adult meant letting the flow carry me away from that battle.

But I still cling to it.

This is why I am still a child.

I can’t let it go. Deep inside there is still a boy that doesn’t accept its dreams to be taken. Growing up meant accepting that, but what could I do? That was a lost fight from the beginning.

What were 30 years in the grand scheme of things? Even if I was to be registered in the most well-known annals of history, one day Earth would be swallowed by the Sun. Galaxies would fade into one another. The universe would shiver to death in a quiet apocalypse. I would be remembered for a couple centuries, maybe some millenia. The world would still have dozens and dozens billions of years to come, and a myriad of eras after.

“Running again, aren’t ya?” I accused that reflection that can’t hit me back.

How many times have I chose to ignore that desktop folder containing all my life’s true work. Turning faces to that immense pile of paper that crystallized hundreds of inky calluses. Drowning the nostalgia thar emerged with remembrances, joke games made with friends, and stories shared with strangers. Fuel to ambitions never truly chased. Poison.

I finish my popsicle. And it says ‘Winner! Great Luck’.

You are reading story I am the World! at novel35.com

I do not believe.

There is never nothing more than I mild luck, if luck did exist, and not just a chaotic motion of events.

As I grab tight on my backpack and turn my heels to once more pursue a normality that isn’t mine, a life staged for others, hanging myself forever between hopes and thoughts on my wasteful fear of disappointment.…Everything falls apart.

A plank shrieks and breaks.

The sun loses its brightness, turning light-blue as the waters swallow me deep. A refreshing coldness engulfs my body, and for a second, I think of swimming, but for what would I return?

Fear rises in the turmoil, only to be soon overrun by leaden regret.

I sink deeper than the lake’s bottom. The sun’s final ray of light touches my skin, and I forever depart from my world.

I was not particularly sinful, or deserving of another chance. The world didn’t owe me anything. In the end I was but another face that smiled, cried and angered, then died.

But that wasn’t my ending.

As eternal darkness came to embrace me…

I strip away from everything that was once material and mundane. Everything that I ever was, seems so much apparent as a shell is left behind. Soon I left the husk behind, and what follows in that unending journey, is only the collective of memories and feelings, the thoughts, my true self.

I see oceans of time and space, colorless and touchless, they feel like dreams that can’t be translated, words unspoken and sounds unheard.

I explored death in its entirety.

My senses are destroyed.

Unhurriedly everything that was superficial is washed by the waters of limbo.

An exquisite sensation emerges, a final euphoria, an epiphany of my true form. Disembodied thoughts understanding themselves, emanating their intention and reverberating echoes through what once was the material world.

I become aware of my soul.

Unshackled of my prison of shame, fear and regret; truly free, unburdened by foolish desires of reciprocating unwanted intentions and expectative.

Eternities elapse in a second.

A shiver shakes my existence, and I feel again. I understand instinctively what is happening, and brace.

My odyssey in that expanse that is death ends.

And I am reborn.

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Prologue: Truthful Transmigration of the Soul