NOVEL NEXT Chapter 1: Reborn
I died. And then I was reborn. Death and rebirth. Unlike the Judeo-Christian concepts of Heaven and Hell, my afterlife was not so conclusive. Perhaps the Hindus and the Buddhists had it right all along.
Buddhists and Hindus believe that when someone dies, they will be reborn again as something else. What they are reborn as depends on their actions in their previous life, or their Karma. The cycle of rebirth is called Samsara and it is a never ending cycle of life, death and rebirth.
They also believe that during the process of reincarnation, the memories of one's past life is lost and they become, once again, a blank slate, to experience the world anew again.
However, there was an anomaly. I was the anomaly.
For one, my memories were not lost in this process of rebirth. I recall my previous life as clear as day.
Secondly, I was not reborn in my previous world. How do I know this? Because in this alternate history of the world, Captain America exists.
Indeed, not only was I reborn with the memories of my past life, I reincarnated into another world!
Thirdly and most importantly… I was reborn with the Gamer System!
____________________________________________________________________________
My name in this new life of mine is Lee Jae Sung. A second-generation Korean-American born June 16 1996 in Brooklyn, New York.
Yes, I was reincarnated as a Korean baby, even though I was Caucasian in my past life. Not that it really matters, I suppose.
As far as I could tell, my consciousness only emerged in this new body of mine at Age 3. When I became self-aware that I was not only reborn in a new world, I was even apparently Asian, I experienced a moment of what a doctor might diagnose as a panic attack.
That moment lasted only a few seconds before the panic attack completely faded away like a switched was flipped internally. An unbelievable sense of calm and collection settled over me as a notification window popped up.
[Gamer's Mind] LVL: MAX
Allows the user to calmly and logically think things through
Allows peaceful state of mind
Immunity to mental disorders
Oh, I immediately realized, so this is one of those !ReincarnatingWithASystem! type scenarios.
My infantile brain began to process my situation. Calmly, logically.
I found myself sitting on the floor of a small apartment, within the body of an infant while an Asian woman bent down gazing at me with stars in her eyes.
"Baby Jae Sung is so cute I want to squeeze his cheeks all day!" The beautiful Asian woman who looked to be in her late twenties exclaimed in Korean as she squeezed my cheeks.
She had shoulder-length black hair that framed her sharp features neatly. And even without any make up on, she looked like she would not seem lacking even if she was standing next to a K-pop idol.
"Oi." I muttered in discomfort, my attempt at observing my surroundings with an analytical indifference ruined as I gazed at the unfamiliar woman invading my personal space moments after I became self-aware.
The woman looked shock, yet her expressions immediately morphed back into delight, "Aigoo, whose child is this, he is so cute even when he is annoyed!"
It wasn't difficult to surmise that this woman in front of me was the birth mother of the body I currently resided in.
Ignoring my mother's overly affectionate behaviours, I began to pick up pieces of clues and information from my surroundings over a period of the next few days. This venture proved a little tougher than I thought as I could not understand the language my parents spoke.
But I still managed to discover a few key pieces of information despite this language barrier.
My parents were both Korean immigrants who had only moved to the United States a year before I was born. They had been drawn to the idea of the American Dream and moved here in search of a better life.
Using the rest of their life savings, they managed to rent a space on the corner of 5th Avenue in Park Slope, Brooklyn and open up a small convenience store.
For the first two days I was a cold and indifferent child, with the ability of the [Gamer's Mind] suppressing the more extreme of my emotions. My parents had certainly noticed the sudden change in my behaviour, and on the second day after my self-awareness they even took me to a pediatrician as they were worried that I had come down with an illness.
I was initially annoyed at the overreaction from these strangers I had only known for a day… but watching them anxiously trying to explain my perceived condition in broken English to the doctor was a tearjerking moment that could have leapt right out of a television drama. Not that I could experience any emotions that could draw a single tear from my eyes anyway.
The doctor took a look at me and gave his diagnosis. He claimed that I was the perhaps the healthiest baby he had ever seen. Obviously that was because I was in perfect health after just one night's sleep.
You have slept in a bed. HP & MP has been fully restored. All negative status effects have been removed.
This was the message that had appeared when I woke up. Even a child's normally weak immune system was nowhere to be found within me.
The doctor muttered under his breath that perhaps I was autistic, something my parents with their poor command of the English language didn't catch but I did. It was clear that this doctor wasn't really a good one as he didn't even bother trying to explain this suspicion of his, ushering my parents out after diagnosing that I wasn't physically ill.
Perhaps he thought it would be too troublesome trying to explain what a developmental disability was to my parents…
My parents heaved a sigh of relief after hearing the doctor's diagnosis. They happily paid the consultation fee of $120 without complaints. That was quite a large sum, especially in 1999, judging from the size of our apartment and state of our furniture at home.
The objective logical part that now dominated my personality reasoned that it would be easier if I just acted like how a 3 year old should behave. Not only would it ease my parents' worries, it would also get rid of any troublesome suspicions they might have.
So I could only try my best to do so, but it wasn't a simple task pretending to be an infant 24 hours a day.
Thus, my silent, analytical observations and cold indifference proceeded without any further unwarranted trips to the doctor as my parents reluctantly accepted the change in my behaviour as simply a phase growing children went through.
As first time parents themselves, they had no reason to believe this was something out of the norm.