Chapter 3: 2 – First Night

He opened his eyes to find himself in a very familiar place, his older brother's house, but even if he was pretty nostalgic he could feel it was just a dream, although a very realistic one. He took off his shoes at the entrance and went inside the house feeling a little emotional, it felt like it's been years since he's been here in this place. Walking to the living room he found the figure of his older brother getting ready to go to work, his wife must have left already. His brother got up and walked to the only place in the living room that was different from what he remembered. He got dumbfounded when he saw it, in a corner of the living room there was a small altar with an offering, and in the photo on top of the altar was his smiling face beside his brother from when they went to an amusement park together. His brother went in front of the altar, put his hands together, and started to pray, strangely enough, even if his mouth wasn't moving he could hear his brother clearly.

"Hey, Akio, how is it going on there in the afterlife? I can't believe it's already been 1 month since you've been gone. I still think that anytime you're gonna call me to talk about something silly, or just gonna show up out of nowhere just to eat dinner with us, then we would spend the night drinking and talk about anime we liked to watch, man I'm gonna miss this so much. Did you know? Yesterday we found out that Maya is pregnant, we were so happy, it seems that even with all the misfortune, life still goes on. But this is good, it will help me keep my feet on the ground, keep going on for my wife and my child now, we decided that if it is a boy we will name him after you, and it will definitely be an incredibly strong baby. You know, Maya says that it was an accident, that nobody could foresee it, but I blame myself for what happened. You sent me a message telling me that your illness was kicking in the day before, I thought about going to your house to check on you but I was so tired from the work that I decided to just sleep, the next day I woke up late so I just went to the office and forgot to message you. I keep thinking, if I went to your house that night or before going to work, maybe you wouldn't need to go to the store that day, I could buy it for you, or just drive you there instead, if I could just keep you home that day, maybe... maybe you would still be here with us you know? I knew you were sick, that maybe you needed my help, but I forgot and just went to work, I'm just a shitty older brother. Hey, Akio... Wherever you are now... can you... can you forgive me?"

By the end of the prayer, a few tears could be seen streaming down his face, Akio similarly shed more than a few tears while listening to his brother. He knew this was just a dream, maybe it was some regret that he had deep within and didn't have had the time to process yet, but it was so realistic, so vivid, he couldn't see his brother blaming himself for his death and remain silent to this. Akio then went in front of his brother and hugged him, the sensation was a little weird, like touching something that wasn't exactly solid, something that could disappear at any moment. His brother could not see him, but he probably felt something, since he reacted and got surprised by the sudden hug. Wasting no time, Akio spoke to his brother about what was on his mind.

"There isn't anything to forgive you for, idiot... You didn't do anything wrong, I couldn't ask for a better brother than you. You know, I indeed had some hard times after what happened, but I happen to have been just reincarnated, although it has only been a few hours since I was born I've got a feeling that it will be a good life, an angel promised me that so I'm certain of it. So... you don't need to be worried about me okay? I'll be just fine, just keep going on, take good care of Maya, and I really want to see my future niece or nephew, and I will keep going on too, I promise you I'll live a life that will make you proud. I love you, dude"

He didn't know if his brother heard him at all, but just when finished speaking, his brother started sobbing loudly. Akio stood there patting his brother for several minutes until he calmed down. When he got up again, he put some offerings at the altar and then got out to work. His figure when he went out seemed a little lighter as if he let go of something weighing on his mind.

***

He opened his eyes suddenly and tried to look around, but since he was a newborn he could do little more than flail his arms around and look a little to the sides. Seeing his tiny hands and the fact that he was in a cradle inside an unknown room, he could assume that everything with his brother before was just a dream. Dreaming about this now led him to think about something that he didn't quite have had the leeway to think about until now, his brother and best friend, the two most important people to him in his past life. His parents in the past life died in a car accident when he was almost finishing high school, the only thing that kept him from crumbling at the time were these two. His brother was already married and working at the time, and he lived with his brother after everything, his best friend helped him cope with a good part of the grief, and the two ended up going to the same university the next year. If he could, he wanted to at least tell them he was okay now, that they don't need to worry about him.

To distract himself from the melancholic feelings creeping inside him, he decided to investigate what he could see of his room from inside his cradle. The room seemed very spacious for a child's room, but it was weird, all the furniture seemed of very good quality but they were way too old-fashioned, like those you would see in museums with items of nobles of the middle age. More so, he couldn't find any light switches or power plugs on the walls. It's like he was inside a museum or a thematic park about the middle ages. If he wanted to be far-fetched, he could guess his new family couldn't afford a house with electricity but looking at the quality of everything in the room, that is impossible. The second guess it's something that should be impossible, but yet most probable, he might have reincarnated in the past. Taking account of everything that happened to him, this isn't even the most unbelievable thing on his list.

The room was relatively spacious and the furniture evoked that kind of noble-like feeling, on one side there was a dresser decorated with variated toys, there was a table with a rocking chair right beside it, and on the opposite side, stood a big bookshelf with children's picture books and some more toys, and then two doors, one beside the bookshelf and the other directly opposed to the cradle. One door probably led to the corridor and the other led to his mother's room, to facilitate when taking care of the baby. The only discrepancy in this setting is a single lamp, standing there in the middle of the table, made of something resembling white marble and decorated with moderate amounts of gold. What differed it from a normal lamp is the place where should be a light bulb there was a polished white stone with some engravings that he couldn't see clearly in the dark. The object was so strange and discrepant with the rest of the room that for a few moments he just look at it trying to imagine what was that lamp-like object, maybe a luxurious stand to display the stone that might be something precious? But even this still seemed a bit wrong, since aside from the stone, all the rest very much was the structure of an electric lamp. In the middle of his pondering something happened that distracted him, some sort of transparent-white-ish window opened before his eyes in a game-like way.

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