Chapter 2: Reincarnation

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Author: 夜州 (Yashu)

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His consciousness returned slowly.

The sunlight shining through the window also passed through his eyelids, letting him know it was daytime.

Opening his eyes at this feeling of light, a colourful and gorgeous ceiling was the first thing that entered his field of view.

“An unknown ceiling.”

Saying the classic line, Kazuya sat up, his body feeling slightly… off as he did so, and looked around.

The bed he had been lying on was much bigger than the single bed that had been in his room, and the room he was now in also had a desk and other pieces of furniture arranged inside it. There was a chandelier hanging from the ceiling, and sunlight was shining through a small gap in the curtains hanging in front of the window.

“Still, seems like they somehow managed to save me, even when I was in that state. I wonder what hospital this is. Like, seriously, what kind of treatment is this, placing me in such an extravagant-looking single room.”

He looked around the room again, noticing something moving slightly at the foot of his bed.

Now that he had noticed that, he also noticed the chair, and the person sitting in it, who seemed to be just waking up, having been resting half on his bed half in their chair.

As the person sat up, Kazuya noticed that she was still quite young. She was also wearing a maid outfit.

They locked eyes, then both froze. Then, tears began flowing down the girl’s cheeks.

“Cain-samaaaaaa!!”

She flung herself at Kazuya all of a sudden.

He didn’t know why, but the girl was now crying, burying her face into his chest.

“Thank goodness… You didn’t wake up for a whole week.”

That was all the girl said, tightening her hug.

“Hey, what are you-!?”

He tried to squirm out of her grip, but the girl in the maid outfit was too big compared to himself for him to be able to do anything.

“Huh? How come I’m smaller? And why’s she a maid and not a nurse?”

Suddenly suspicious, Kazuya opened and closed his hand, staring at it.

It was nowhere near the size of someone in their second year of high school, but seemed instead to be a hand more befitting an infant.

As he was staring at his hand in a daze, the maid suddenly stood up.

“I shall go inform the lady about this!”

The girl in the maid uniform ran over to the door with loud footsteps, opened it, and left the room.

“What in the world happened to me…”

He kept on opening and closing his hand until he got used to the feeling.

“I got stabbed by that dude, met Manami-chan, then I fainted… and now I’m in a hospital? But that girl called me Cain… Kid, I’m Kazuya.”

While he was trying to organize his thoughts, the sounds of someone rushing down the corridor outside reached him, the door being opened not long after.

“Cain! You woke up! You had such a high fever and you wouldn’t wake up for a whole week, I was so worried!”

A woman in her twenties with waist-long, silver hair rushed into the room.

She was wearing a rather well-made dress. Seeing a person so different from normal sent Kazuya into a daze again.

Moreover, this beautiful woman was now hugging him, crying from happiness.

His face was being squashed by her softer parts, making him both happy and embarrassed.

“Cain! Do you recognize me? Do you recognize mum? You haven’t lost your memory, right?”

Kazuya couldn’t understand what the silver-haired woman was saying.

His parents had died a long time ago, so he wouldn’t be convinced so easily, especially if a beauty in her twenties suddenly appeared in front of him claiming to be his mother.

His thoughts still all over the place, Kazuya simply stared at his self-proclaimed mother.

“My lady, Cain-sama has only just woken up, so his thoughts might still be in disarray.”

“He did sleep for a whole week, so you might have a point. All right Cain, just take it easy and rest today. I’ll pop in again later. Reine was really worried about you too.”

Seemingly of the same opinion as the maid girl, who looked as if she could have been a middle schooler, the person who was apparently Kazuya’s mother turned to face her.

“Silvia. Please keep an eye on him for today. Also, soup should be fine, so I’ll have some made.”

“As you wish, my lady.”

Kazuya’s self-proclaimed mother and the maid girl left the room to prepare food.

On his own in the room, Kazuya once again began opening and closing his hand.

It was, no doubt, unmistakably, most certainly, the hand of a small child.

“I guess this is that reincarnation thing you see in light novels. Seems like they didn’t manage to save me after all. But… that’s fine, since I managed to save Manami-chan. I didn’t have to see Saori sad.”

Kazuya muttered to himself, lying back down on the bed and staring at the ceiling.

Light novels were amongst the topics often discussed at school, and Kazuya himself had read quite a few ones about reincarnation, be they actual books or digitally. Saori had liked them a lot, so they had often lent each other books.

“I guess I’ll have to figure out what’s going on here first… Apparently I was asleep for a whole week.”

Since pain ran through his muscles and joints whenever he tried to move, he spent time by inspecting the room.

Some time later, there was a knock on his door, and the girl in the maid outfit from earlier entered the room with a bowl of soup on a tray.

“Cain-sama, I have brought soup for you.”

Kazuya slowly sat up. The girl put the soup on a table next to the bed, and Kazuya began to eat.

“––It’s tasty.”

The faint taste of the meat and vegetables in the soup became more noticeable the longer he kept them in his mouth.

Kazuya finally accepted that he had been reincarnated when he drank the rest of the soup.

The fact that he had reincarnated immediately led to the one thing he was the most curious about.

(She called her Silvia earlier, right?)

“Silvia. Do we have a mirror?”

“Yes indeed. However, while you might have become a little thinner because you didn’t eat anything while you were asleep, your appearance hasn’t changed.”

Silvia took out a mirror from a drawer and handed it to Kazuya.

The hand mirror was quite gorgeous, its edging decorated with silver. Holding it in both hands, Kazuya steeled himself, and looked into the mirror.

The boy looking back at him from the mirror had silver hair with a slight blueish tint, round, blue eyes, and seemed to be around three years old.

His facial features resembled those of the woman from earlier who had called herself his mother.

He had been worried he was ugly, but if he took after his mother, he would become quite handsome in the future, a fact which made Kazuya unthinkingly sigh in relief.

As he was turning his face left and right, staring at his reflection in the mirror, Silvia’s face suddenly appeared next to his in it.

“Cain-sama, you have excellent future prospects in terms of looks, so no need to be worried. You’re already really cute!”

Silvia said to him, smiling.

He had completely forgotten Silvia was next to him, and he handed the mirror back to her slightly embarrassed at having been entranced by his own looks.

“Thanks for the mirror.”

Silvia put the mirror back in the drawer she had taken it out from.

Kazuya then slowly drank the rest of the soup. It was so delicious that he unthinkingly asked for more, but he hadn’t eaten for a whole week while he had been asleep, so it wasn’t that surprising.

After that, he spent three days lying in bed.

He had completely recovered already, but Silvia and the rest of his family had insisted he rest for a while.

There was only one problem he had with leading such a life.

Kazuya had come to terms with having reincarnated and living as Cain during those few days.

However, he had no memories from between his birth as Cain and his reincarnation.

He had been able to confirm being three years old by asking Silvia, but he had not a single memory of those three years.

He didn’t have any memories from when he was younger than three years old as Kazuya either, but since he was currently three years old, it would make sense to remember at least something.

The thing he wanted most was information about this world, or rather, information about everything outside his room, which he hadn’t been allowed to leave yet. He had lived in modern-age Japan before, which had enabled him to look up information from around the world with just a smartphone.

Currently, he didn’t even know what was outside his room.

Also, while he could understand and talk to Silvia, he could make neither heads nor tails of the letters used in books.

The picture books on the shelf by his desk were most certainly not in Japanese. It was written in a completely unfamiliar alphabet.

So, Kazuya gathered information about the house while resting in his bed by listening to Silvia talk about the goings-on.

His name was, apparently, Cain von Silford.

He found out that he was the third son of the margrave who governed the Gracia territory in the Kingdom of Esfort.

The Kingdom of Esfort was located in the very centre of the Glunude continent, surrounded by various countries. Apparently, there had been quite a few wars in the past, but it had been peaceful for the past few years.

The margraves of Esfort possessed the lands bordering other countries, and were allowed to have their own standing armies with which they could protect their lands and the country.

He felt a little relieved after hearing from Silvia that margraves belonged to the higher-ranking of the nobles.

His father’s name was Garm von Silford Gracia.

The head of the house was allowed to add the name of their territory after their own. The ‘von’ in the middle of someone’s name meant they were a noble, while commoners on the other hand only had given names. When he met his father for the first time after having reincarnated, the man turned out to be a blue-haired, well-built man in his mid thirties.

Garm had two wives, with Kazuya’s mother being the second one, which also explained the age gap.

His mother’s name was Sarah von Silford. She was, unsurprisingly, the silver-haired woman who had rushed in the moment he had woken up. He also had a sister four years older than himself, Reine von Silford, who had the same blue-tinged silver hair and similar facial features to him.

She visited him every day after he woke up.

Garm’s first wife was called Maria von Silford, and they had two sons, Jin and Alec, but since they were both attending the academy in the royal capital, Maria was staying with them in the family villa in the capital.

One enrolled in the academy when they were ten, and graduated when they were fifteen, which was also the age at which one came of age.

The territory of Gracia was a week east from the royal capital by carriage, and encompassed many smaller towns and villages, as well as Gracia itself, where the margrave resided. The territory had a fortress in the east, where it bordered the Baisas Empire, and its southern reaches were covered in the so-called Forest of Monsters, where, as the name suggested, a lot of monsters were to be found.

It took a while, but once he had learned everything about his family and the lands, Cain began thinking about what he should do.

In this world, people received a baptism, where a priest relayed the words of the gods, from the church when they turned five.

The national religion was called Marinefordism, a polytheistic religion with seven gods. There was also a country called the Holy Country of Marineford, which built churches in the capitals and major cities of all other countries and sent priests and bishops there to man them, financing the upkeep through subsidies from the country they were built in and donations from the public.

As for the seven gods, they went as follows:

The Creator, Zenom

The Warrior God, Thanos

The Earth God, Bera

The Goddess of Magic, Leno

The God of Skill, Grim

The God of Commerce, Panam

The Goddess of Life, Lime

Zenom, the Creator was their leader, and the other six all had their own specific duties.

Then, he found out that magic existed in this world, and he was thrilled that he might be able to use it, when back on Earth it had been nothing but fantasy.

Cain wasn’t the oldest son, so he wouldn’t inherit the territory. It would instead go to the eldest son of the family, Jin.

Not-first-sons could apparently be given noble titles for outstanding achievements and start their own lineage, but most usually helped out their siblings with the management of the territory, became a knight, or went to work in a company or as an adventurer.

“It’s gotta be being an adventurer.”

After finding out that there was no easy way to become the head of a noble family, he decided to become an adventurer and explore the world. Silvia told him that the world also had elves, dwarves, beastmen, and many other races of sentient beings, which only served to strengthen that decision.

He had plenty of knowledge gained from light novels from his previous life, so he wasn’t lacking in motivation either.

“But first, I’ll have to find out more about this world. How to read, the world’s history, geography…”

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