Chapter 3: A Simple Start

A loud yawn escaped Pathos' lips as a soreness began to fill his eyes and the misty haze of drowsiness that had settled within his mind seemed to fade.

"Shit, I don't remember feeling this awful when I fell..." However, an unfamiliar setting dawned on him before Pathos could even finish his first sentence of the day.

Instead of the same white, pasty hospital walls that seemed to have surrounded him previously and the same beeping heart monitor on his right side, his vision was now filled with bright neon pink. From the roof panels to the floor boards, to his bed sheets, pillowcases, and even his pyjamas, everything seemed to be intoxicatingly bright neon pink. The colour seemed to have filled every single corner of the room, as it left nothing untouched by its overpowering presence. Although to Pathos, it wasn't the observable pink intoxication that had been spewed across the room that had worried him, the fact of the matter is that he never seemed to have been in a room like this during his entire life.

Pathos began to thoroughly check his own mind to give the room some sort of familiarity; however, the further and further he checked, the faster he realised that he was being overwhelmed by the sheer depth of his mind. Whether it was what he had eaten yesterday, the day before that, the year before that, or what he had said in one of his random interviews a couple of months ago, he could not help but remember it all at once.

But nevertheless, as a crippling headache reached every corner of his mind, Pathos couldn't help but come to one single conclusion.

He had no idea where he was.

From all that he had remembered last night, after filling out that damn character creation email, he had suddenly become extremely tired before he had awoken in this bright pink mess. How did he get here in the first place? Did it happen when he was asleep? Was this done by someone? Had he been kidnapped?

Pathos understood the concept of celebrity kidnapping very well during his 20ish years as a celebrant. Whatever the reason, whether it was the result of an overly obsessed fan trapping their favourite idol in their room in hopes to win their love, or some random criminal organisation holding major celebrities or possibly their families hostage, Pathos knew it never ended well. Death, murder, and an unexpected pregnancy all result in severe trauma.

Pathos couldn't help but leap out of the bed he'd been lazily spawning on and up to the nearest windows, pushing with all his might to open them and shoving his head right through afterwards as a flood of new, darker memories about horrific stories uncontrollably filled his mind.

With a blast of fresh air insulating his face, Pathos couldn't help but take a single minute to slowly calm himself and try and settle the overwhelming sea of thoughts and memories that were visibly running their course through his mind.

"Ok, before I come to any irrational conclusions, let's just first see what the hell is going on." After releasing one last heavy sigh, Pathos slowly turned back to the room.

Pink once again filled his vision. as Pathos quickly scoped out the room: a single bed adorned with a bedside table; a desk that was placed along the very corner of the room, filled with a random assortment of papers and a pink mobile phone; a group of stuffed animals from a variety of different species also placed in another corner; and a full-body mirror that seemed to be placed facing the single bed, containing the image of a so-far familiar figure.

The sight of a new presence could help but make Pathos let out a shriek; however, at the sight of the figure, he couldn't help but feel his brisk fear turn into bubbling anger.

A young boy with a small, delicate body His long, straight, platinum hair was seemingly transparent and gave off a soft glow akin to the shine of the sun. The radiance of his hair created the effect of a glistening waterfall that travelled down his slender shoulders and rested slightly below his knee line. His eyes were as deep blue as the sea and were framed by long eyelashes.

"You've got to shitting me!" "Is it because of that dreadful email?" A piece of the seemingly long and complex puzzle seemed to start coming together as Pathos was able to quickly put together the idea that his current appearance and the appearance of his avatar being the same couldn't be a coincidence. However, the more he learned, the less he was able to understand. If there was a correlation between the email and the situation he is in now, then why did they choose him in the first place?

Pathos was not unfamiliar with this type of scenario, as he was quickly introduced to the concept of manga, and thus isekai while filming in east Asia. The entire situation in which an unpopular or socially despised individual has all of their wishes granted simply because they have suffered more than everyone else. And, while he had read some in the being, he had quickly dropped the overused and simplistic concept, which seemed devoid of any common sense.

"But how did I find myself in a situation like this? I don't have much in common with those damn protagonists. I virtually have everything I want in life." Whether it was fame, money, or recognition, Pathos seemed to hold an abundance of it, and although some people may agree that his love life was sorely lacking, as all the articles about him ever being a "playboy" were very simply overcomplicated interactions he had with some female actresses, he felt as if he had his own life under control.

"Shit, I should have even opened that damn thing." Pathos couldn't help but lean against the bed as his body slowly drooped to the floor, but before he could finish his peace, the door to his room was slammed wide open with an unfamiliar figure rushing through.

"S-Son! I heard screaming. Are you ...!?"

 

 

 

Aspro had decided to take the day off due to the overwhelming state of her own well-being. With her relationship with her son degrading as the day went on, she couldn't help but feel her own sense of self-motivation slowly dwindle.

She had always been a woman who worked hard when given a reason to, but as she started to feel her own reasons for continuing slowly leave her life, she couldn't help but feel helpless and afraid of what would be left of her.

So while she was mourning in her own sense of self-mortification, the distant scream of her son seemed to have brought her back to some semblance of her previous sense. She was inclined to ignore them in the beginning; there had been previous times when she acted on her sense of motherly proactiveness only to be shouted at by her own son for desecrating him when he was on a call with some of his friends. However, as she began to hear a second yell straight after the first, a sense of dread filled her as anxiety about her own child's safety overwhelmed her.

After charging out of her room and into his, she displayed that what she was simply presented with was far more "spectacular" than she was prepared for.

"Son! I heard screaming. Are you ...!?" Before she could even finish herself off, she felt herself choke on her own saliva as the presence of her son, no, the presence of the entry that lay before her, filled her eyes.

Although they shared the same characteristics (hair length, colour, and eye colour), they appeared to be about the same height and weight, and they both had the same facial structure. However, comparing them based on attractiveness would be like comparing night and day. For although she may have been Pathos' mother at heart, she was still as womanly as any other woman on this planet, and she would be simply blind if she had been able to tell that her son used to be incredibly handsome, being a solid 7.2/10 in her own eyes. However, the being in front of her appeared to be far more impressive in appearance than her own son, and possibly on a larger scale as well.

Perfection.

A single word that seemed to capture the essence of the being, no, god standing before her. From the way, his eyes seemed to flutter in confusion to the way his body seemed to shiver in the cold, most likely due to the window being left open, no matter what aspect a human being took apart from the young man's godlike appearance, the only words that could form from their mouths would be calls of devotion and praise.

His presence demanded to be seen, the path his feet would leave behind demanded to be praised, and the mere sight of the young boy seemed to be able to conquer the hearts of all who would have the pleasure to meet it.

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For the first time in his life, Aspro was perplexed by the spectacular beauty that appeared in the appearance of the man whom he could only assume to be her son. If it weren't for the scream erupting from his mouth as his finger pointed at her, she'd be terrified that she'd given in to some irrational womanly desire.

"Oh, I'm sorry! I should have allowed you to change!" Aspro felt herself quickly rid of the man's presence as she hurried to the kitchen to prepare some breakfast for the both of them. However, as she turned the cooker on, she couldn't help but feel her own body shiver at the thought of the next interaction with her son.

"I'm such a terrible excuse for a mother."

 

 

 

Pathos finally was able to catch his breath again as the sight of the mysterious stranger left his vision. Although he would argue that screaming in the presence of a stranger is nothing short of rude in any other situation, he felt he had a very good reason as he stared again at the strange, sickeningly pink room.

"So I'm guessing that, instead of taking over a completely new body, I've taken over somebody else. Damn, I'm sorry, I guess." Pathos couldn't help but bury his hands in his face as he sighed again. From the information he could gather from the rather breathless but bizarre situation, he was able to understand that it was far more like one of these mangas than he thought.

 Perhaps he was not kidnapped but rather placed inside a body that resembled the avatar he had created, and instead of being an orphan as he had "previously," he has now been given a family.

"I never asked for this sh*t!" Pathos prefaced his differences between the average Isekai protagonist and himself once more. He didn't want to escape reality; he didn't want a family; he didn't even want to become the avatar he was modelling; he was already more than pleased with the reality he was living and felt like wanting to escape it to go to some sort of fantasy land was simply childish. However, he seemed to have been more powerless than he had wished to be, as he could simply close his eyes and click his heels in order to magically appear back in his hospital bed.

He decides to stand after a lot of delirious pathos before slowly making his way towards the door of his room.

"I guess I won't get what I want by crying about it." With a single deep breath, Pathos braced himself as he speedily opened his door to be presented with...

an average household corridor, which seemed to lead to a flight of stairs that progressed downward.

"I don't even know what I expected." After inspecting both sides of the hallway, he decides to follow his instincts and descend the flight of stairs, beginning in another separate hallway. This time with a small portrait of a family by the main wall, hands up higher than he could even reach, with the image of a confident mother, a seemingly mellow father, and a delicate son who held a beaming smile in the centre of the frame,

"Damn," Pathos couldn't help but whisper bitterly as a sense of unprofound guilt hit him as he walked to the room, where he could hear the sounds of plates being set aside and a chair being pulled up.

As he slowly entered the room, he recognised it as the kitchen, as the presence of an oven and microwave, as well as draws that lined half the room, confirmed his suspicions.

With a newly added sense of awkwardness, Pathos slowly started to shuffle himself onto the table before taking a seat. He could help but feel the woman currently in the room's eyes burry into him, which he could only presume was in confusion as she also seemed to bring herself dignitary across from him, as both of their plates were laid upon the table.

She appeared to be a rather young woman who seemed to be in her early twenties; however, knowing that the lady in front of him was his apparent mother, he could easily understand that her appearance had been misleading. She had the same name-brand snowy white hair as him, albeit a little shorter and reaching up to her shoulder, and the same deep blue eyes that seemed to resemble saffron. Once again, Pathos was also able to prove that the fact that she had been his mother couldn't have been a lie.

The food she had placed before them both appeared to be a simple blend of cereal and milk, but Pathos wasn't able to put a mental label on the cereal because it looked so different from anything he had previously eaten.

After admitting a brief thanks to the lady, whose name he still did not know, he could not help but feel her gaze intensify before she began to deeply sigh.

"What do you want?... If it's about this morning, I apologise for barging into your room." Pathos couldn't help but trade places with the woman, as it was his turn to stare deeply at the woman in confusion. As their eyes locked for the second time that day, the woman couldn't help but become engrossed in her son's new-found beauty, leaving her only way out to break eye contact before looking at her own food.

"Just because we're finally eating breakfast as a family doesn't mean I'm going to increase your allowance or anything!" The woman's broken voice begged for assistance, however, only bitterly delivered cold words came out. While her son's sudden appearance at the dining table had been a welcoming sight, she would not allow herself to be so easily be manipulated again. Although she was pathetic, she believed she wasn't that stupid to fall for the same trick three times in a row.

As the now even more awkward silence seemed to settle in, Pathos couldn't help but slowly start to gain a slight understanding of the previous relationship this body had with his mother; however, a really big question had been away in the back of his mind.

What exactly should he do with this information? It wants to be like the previous owner had left him a list of everything he wanted the current owner to do, and it wasn't as if a god-like or some sort of magical being had a task they wanted him to complete.

Although that question may have been obvious, the answer surely wasn't, as he felt like a child being asked what they wanted to be when they grew up. A large part of him screamed out at him to once again become an actor, to become a celebrity whose name fills out every conversation. However, another part of him told him to wait for a little, to try and enjoy a life he had never had or had been given before he decided to commit himself to such an unchangeable path.

So when it came to the way he needed to confront the relationship with his mother, he decided it would be best to try and mend any broken bond between them in order for him to truly have a fresh start within this world. Although it would take a rather long time before he would feel like her opinion of him would change, Pathos believed it was always better to start sooner rather than later. He jumped out of his chair and walked in towards the very broken woman after only a few spoonfuls of cereal in front of him.

Her eyes were downcast as she stared at the bowl as if it were the most interesting thing in the world. His only guess as to why was so that she could simply ignore him until he went away. He could only imagine how many problems his previous self had caused her, so he didn't feel so bad as he slowly approached her ear and whispered a quiet apology.

"I'm sorry for everything I've done in the past. And I just wanted to say that although I'm pretty confused right now, the breakfast was enjoyable. Thank you." It wasn't the sweetest or most descriptive apology, but Pathos felt like it was more than enough for her to know as he left the woman to her own devices.

However, as he slowly walked away, he could hear faint distant hiccups of melancholy, which could only fuel his bitter opinion about the character his previous self used to be.

"For the time being, I'll probably do some research." Pathos silently whispered to himself as he slowly shuffled the door of "his" current bedroom.

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