Chapter 1: Chapter 01

It started with the kind of cold that crawls under your nails and refuses to leave. Snow came sideways, needling the skin, and the night tasted like metal and exhaust. He had been riding the late bus—the cheapest one, naturally—half-asleep, cheek against the window, when the driver braked too hard and the whole world lurched.

Screams. The thunder of crumpling steel. Then silence that wasn’t silence at all—just the white hiss of winter wind squeezing through new seams in broken glass.

The bus didn’t stop so much as hang. Half the chassis went over the edge of the overpass, and the floor tilted until everyone learned what gravity truly believed. Someone’s backpack slid past his boots and vanished into the dark. A phone followed, cartwheeling into the void with a bright screen and a happier life than his.

“…you’ve got to be kidding me,” he muttered, because sarcasm was free.

He’d lived a quiet kind of failure. Not villainy. Not heroism. Just… spreadsheets that stole daylight, knuckles that never touched a canvas, and a mouth too polite to tell people where to shove their advice. He was supposed to be asleep in a gym, chalk and leather in his lungs, counting the rounds by the ache in his shoulders. Instead, he learned to count quarters and smile during performance reviews. He’d smiled the day they “misplaced” money and found it on his back, too. Losing your job is a cliff; discovering you were the scapegoat is the fall.

Now he was hanging from an actual cliff, give or take a guardrail.

The driver swore. A kid cried. An old man clutched the bar like it could bargain with physics. The bus creaked again—deep, unhappy. He swallowed. Running wasn’t an option. Running had never really been an option for him, had it?

“Everyone, move to the back,” he said. Loud. Clear. He didn’t even recognize the voice as his.

A woman stared, wide-eyed. “Is it going to—”

“Maybe. Let’s not be sitting in the front row when it decides.”

He wedged his shoulder against a seat and helped her crawl “uphill.” A teenager in a varsity jacket passed a toddler like they were handing off a priceless relic, which, to be fair, they were. He moved, pushed, lifted. The old rhythm came back in ugly, useful ways—the short power of hips, the brace through the core, breath where it needed to be. It wasn’t a ring, but it felt like one: no audience, no judges, just a clock you couldn’t see and a problem trying to knock you down.

He found the old man last. Still welded to the bar, knuckles bone-white. “Sir,” he said, gentle and urgent at the same time. “We’re going. With or without that thing.”

“I can’t,” the old man whispered, and his teeth chattered so hard the words shook apart. “My leg—”

“Copy that.” He pried the fingers free—one, two, three, four, five—each a small betrayal of fear. The bus moaned. A bolt pinged somewhere beyond the windshield, sharp as a bell. He hooked the man under the arms. “We’re leaving,” he said. “I never liked this seat anyway.”

The emergency door at the back had been punched open by two students with more courage than sense. The wind knifed through. He shoved the old man toward the outstretched hands. They took him, dragged him, voices rising with that particular relief that sounds like laughter and sobbing at the same time.

The bus shifted again. A long, tired sound. He turned to go, and his eyes snagged on the driver—still in his chair, belt jammed, blood thinly painting his temple. The man’s lips moved around a prayer or a curse. Maybe both.

You could leave, he told himself. You did enough. For once in your life, take the small win.

He moved toward the driver instead. Some habits are a kind of gravity.

“Hey,” he said, fingers slipping on the belt latch, finding purchase, yanking. “Field trip’s over.”

The driver blinked. “Is everyone—”

“Working on it.” The latch snapped loose. He hauled the man up. The bus tilted a few degrees more, which felt like a lot when the night hungry below you. For a heartbeat he tasted an old gym—linseed oil, sweat, the ghost of a bell. Should’ve had more rounds, he thought, and then corrected himself. No. Should’ve taken the first one.

They staggered down the aisle together. The floor shivered. The driver stumbled; he took the weight. His shoulder burned. I really should’ve kept training, he thought, and almost laughed at the pointlessness.

Hands reached from the back. He shoved the driver into them and felt the collective pull like a tide. Someone said, “Come on!” Someone else said, “Please!” The bus answered with a rip that was entirely unpoetic.

He could have jumped.

He didn’t.

He turned back because there was one more—he didn’t even remember deciding. It was the kid in the varsity jacket, ankle tangled in a torn seatbelt he’d tried to cut with car keys that were losing. The kid’s bravado had bled out somewhere between the second and third creak; what remained was a sixteen-year-old with a bad haircut and a worse idea of what “invincible” meant.

“Hey,” he said, dropping to a knee, fingers digging at the belt webbing. “I’ve got you.”

The bus protested. Bolts sheared like snapped violin strings. The world tilted hard.

“Go!” the kid yelled, terror pitching his voice high. “Go!”

“I am going,” he said, because apparently he was also doing jokes now. The fabric finally gave. The kid scrambled, clawed toward the back, was taken. He watched the hands pull him free and thought, Good. One clean word.

The floor kicked.

Gravity remembered his name.

He went with the bus.

Glass became stars. Wind became a fist. Somewhere inside the chaos was a simple inventory: the ache in his left shoulder from an old sparring match, the jagged warmth in his ribs from someone else’s elbow on a crowded train years ago, the tenderness behind his sternum that had never healed because you can’t splint a dream. Regret wasn’t a flood. It was a neat stack of paper he’d been filing for years: the gym he didn’t go back to; the apology he never demanded; the woman whose shout in that alley he didn’t ignore (good) and the knife he didn’t see (less good). He’d done one thing right, maybe two. On balance? Mediocre. His favorite flavor.

“I wanted more rounds,” he told the dark, which felt vaguely like confessing to a friend. “Next time, I won’t sit down.”

The impact came up through his bones like a bell tolling from the bottom of a well. The cold left first. The pain untied its knots. Sound stretched thin and snapped.

For a moment, there was a corridor made of light. It wasn’t a tunnel so much as a direction his mind decided to walk without consulting him. He didn’t move. He was moved. Convenient. The afterlife had good customer service.

A voice arrived, flat and mechanical, like an airport announcement pretending to be a god.

“Hah?”

He would have looked around if he still had a neck. The voice didn’t care. It chimed again, blandly cheerful.

(Starting parameters set.)

(Initializing…)

“Right,” he said—or thought—dry as winter air. “So that’s the queue.”

Warmth followed—impossible, gentle, and very, very wet. He would have frowned. He would have made a joke no one should hear. Instead, he let the light carry him, and somewhere past the end of his old name and the beginning of a new one, he smiled at a ridiculous thought:

“At least my karma points went up, right?.”

The world answered with a heartbeat that wasn’t his.

He blinked. Once, twice, ten times—still there. The room smelled faintly of wood smoke and something like herbs left too long in boiling water. The ceiling was low, beams of dark timber crossing like ribs overhead. Everything was wood: the walls, the bedframe, even the chair in the corner that looked one good sneeze away from collapse. Old-fashioned didn’t even cover it; it felt like he’d been dragged into a historical reenactment that hadn’t gotten the budget for stone.

And then there was the fabric.

Soft. Heavy. Wrapped around him in a way that made him feel… embarrassingly snug. He hadn’t been swaddled since—well, never mind. The important part was that somebody was carrying him. Carrying him easily. Like he weighed less than a bag of chips. He tried to wiggle, to protest, to do anything that resembled normal adult motor skills, but all he managed was a pitiful stretch of tiny arms that looked suspiciously like breadsticks.

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“Oh, great,” he thought. “I lost the heavyweight title and downgraded to newborn burrito.”

The movement stopped, and he was placed down on something softer than expected. He turned his eyes—slow, sluggish, unwilling—and saw her.

A woman. Face pale with exhaustion, lips parted like each breath cost more than the last. Her hair stuck damply to her forehead, and her arms trembled even at rest. She looked like someone who had just lost a marathon against life and barely crossed the finish line.

And she was looking at him.

“No. No, nope, absolutely not,” he told himself. “I did not just get offed in public transportation hell to respawn as somebody’s screaming side quest. This is—this is a prank. Some cosmic practical joke. Any second now, Ashton Kutcher’s going to burst in with a wooden camera and yell ‘Gotcha! I won’t believe it unless I get a super awesome skill like Atomic Buster.’”

He tried to laugh, but what came out was… a squeaky noise. The kind of sound rubber ducks make when you step on them.

“…fantastic,” he thought. “I’ve been downgraded from sarcasm to squeaks. Just kill me again.”

The woman’s eyes softened—tired, but warm—and she reached out, brushing a hand across his forehead with a tenderness that made his jokes shrivel on the spot.

“Alright,” he thought, staring up at her, “this is officially too real. Someone’s going to explain why I went from failed office worker and accidental bus acrobat to starring in Baby’s First Medieval Drama. Until then, I refuse to take this seriously. I am not reincarnated. I am… uh… in VR. Yeah. VR. Hyper-realistic, full-sensory baby simulator. That’s a thing now.”

Another squeak escaped him, traitorous.

“…and apparently, the DLC doesn’t come with dignity.”

He tried to turn his head again, but all he managed was another floppy newborn impression of a sack of potatoes. And then—there it was. Floating neatly in front of him like the world’s cheapest video game HUD:

Health: 10/10

Mana: 10/10

Stamina: 10/10

“…Ten, ten, ten. Balanced build, huh? Great. I got reincarnated as the tutorial character.”

The more he stared, the more the display jittered and expanded, until a full menu filled his vision.

Name: Ludger

Level: 01

Class Master: [None]

Job Master: Elaine (Cook)

Health: 10/10

Mana: 10/10

Stamina: 10/10

Strength: 01

Dexterity: 01

Intelligence: 01

Vitality: 01

Wisdom: 01

Endurance: 01

Luck: 01

Class Skills:

[Slot 1]

[Slot 2]

[Slot 3]

[Slot 4]

[Slot 5]

Job Skills:

[Slot 1]

[Slot 2]

[Slot 3]

[Slot 4]

[Slot 5]

“…Perfect. No Class Master, so I’m basically unsupervised. Job Master: Elaine the Cook, which means my career is already limited to cutting onions and taste-testing soups. And skills? None entry under Class Skills. Forget fireballs, forget sword techniques—I’ve been blessed with the almighty power of… nothing.”

He flailed his tiny breadstick arms against the blanket, which made him look less like a hero and more like an angry burrito.

“Alright. Let me summarize: stats of a soggy sponge, no class, a cook as my job supervisor. What a powerhouse. Truly the chosen one.”

Another squeak betrayed him, and the exhausted woman beside him smiled faintly and brushed his forehead. For a moment, the sarcasm faltered. Then he looked back at the glowing screen.

“Fine. So maybe this is real. But if I’m stuck here like this, I better get ‘Gourmet Taster’ next—otherwise this Job Master situation is highway robbery.”

A few months later, Ludger finally admitted it—though not gracefully. For the longest time he clung to every excuse he could think of: hallucination, VR simulation, extended fever dream sponsored by bad bus accidents. He told himself he’d wake up any day now in a hospital bed with a doctor telling him his insurance didn’t cover reincarnation. But no. Day after day, the wooden ceilings, the creaky floors, and the medieval furniture didn’t vanish. Neither did the warm arms that wrapped him up like a burrito every night.

Reality had a way of winning arguments, and Ludger had lost. Stubbornly, reluctantly, he accepted the obvious: he had been reincarnated.

And then there was Elaine.

His so-called “Job Master,” but more importantly—the woman who had hugged him tight against her chest when the world still felt like static and confusion. She wasn’t just a tired shadow from his first moments; she was real, consistent, and… undeniably beautiful.

Elaine was a charming young woman with soft blond hair that spilled over her shoulders like threads of sunlight, catching every flicker of the hearth’s glow. Her eyes, a clear green that seemed to shift between forest depth and playful brightness, studied him with equal measures of curiosity and love. Her cheeks still carried the faint roundness of youth, and though her frame was slender, she moved with the easy grace of someone who had worked hard all her life.

To Ludger, she seemed almost too put-together for the role of “mother.” She laughed often, though usually at his squeaky attempts at protest. She hummed melodies while working, soft and untrained but warm enough to lull him to sleep. And she never hesitated to scoop him up, wrapping him snug in those fabrics like she had that first night, sealing him in a cocoon of comfort and human warmth he wasn’t sure he deserved.

“…Great,” Ludger thought as he stared at her one afternoon, tiny arms flailing pointlessly. “So my master, my caretaker, and my mother are all the same person. And she happens to be gorgeous. Reincarnation really knows how to mess with a guy’s sense of boundaries. Can I joke about this without being cancelled?”

Still, every time Elaine smiled down at him, brushing his hair from his forehead with a touch lighter than air, even Ludger’s sarcasm lost some of its bite.

Elaine talked to him. A lot.

Morning, noon, evening—every chance she had, she’d smile and murmur words at him, like the world’s most dedicated tour guide to a language he didn’t ask for. At first, it felt like white noise, a lullaby of syllables. But as the weeks rolled on, Ludger couldn’t deny it: he was learning fast. Too fast, maybe. He could already pick out patterns, simple words, the way her tone shifted between a question and a command.

It was progress, sure. But it was also… annoying.

“Honestly,” Ludger thought while trapped in another one-sided “conversation,” “it’d be fantastic if my mother was a language teacher instead of a cook. Just imagine it—daily lessons, structured exercises, maybe even a textbook or two. Instead, I get lullabies and recipes for words I don’t know yet. Thanks, Job Master. Ten out of ten efficiency.”

He squeaked in protest one afternoon as she rattled off another stream of chatter. She just smiled, kissed his forehead, and kept going. No escape. His stats might have been pathetic, but Elaine’s persistence was max level.

When Ludger wasn’t being force-fed vocabulary, his mind drifted to another subject: his father. Or rather, the complete lack of one. Since the moment he’d been swaddled into this new life, no father-shaped figure had ever appeared. Not a shadow, not a voice, not even a suspicious cough from a hallway. Just Elaine, all warmth and effort, and the silence of someone missing.

In stories like this, he figured there were only four options.

“One: he’s dead. Classic tragic backstory material.

Two: he’s off at war, fighting dragons, demons, or a tax increase.

Three: he’s a womanizer, probably leaving a trail of half-siblings like confetti.

Four: he’s alive and well, but a complete idiot. Like, pants-on-backwards idiot.”

He wiggled his baby arms and sighed. “Honestly? None of those options sound great for my nonexistent trust fund.”

Still, if he had to place a bet with the coins he didn’t have, Ludger leaned toward war or idiot. At least those gave him a chance at having someone to complain about later. Dead was boring, and womanizer just meant family reunions would be awkward forever.

“Yeah,” Ludger thought, gazing up at the wooden ceiling like it held answers. “War or idiot. That’s where I’d put my nonexistent money.”

Six months. Half a year of being stuck in this world, and Ludger finally got “training.” Elaine, ever the doting mother, decided it was time to teach him how to crawl. She cheered, coaxed, and clapped her hands as if he’d just been recruited into the kingdom’s elite forces.

Of course, Ludger had known how to crawl since forever—being reincarnated came with a little perk called memory. But he couldn’t exactly go sprinting laps around the house without breaking character. So, like a seasoned actor, he played dumb. Flopped here, rolled there, gave her the satisfaction of watching him drag himself forward like a worm discovering ambition for the first time.

At least it meant freedom. A tiny bit, sure, but freedom nonetheless. He could wiggle his way to the corner and grab at things, even if those things were usually chairs, rugs, and whatever else looked like a choking hazard.

Still, freedom didn’t change one fact: he was bored.

“Six months in, and nothing,” Ludger thought, glaring at his empty status window. “No new class, no new job, no miracle skill like ‘Fireball for Infants’ or ‘Baby Martial Arts.’ What kind of system is this? I was supposed to be breaking records, not breaking teeth on wooden toys.”

The so-called almighty screen in his vision didn’t help either. It just sat there, smugly reminding him that his stats were about as threatening as lukewarm porridge.

But eventually, he forgot about the system. Not because he wanted to, but because he noticed something else.

Elaine.

At first, he thought he was imagining it. But over the weeks, it became harder to ignore: she was getting thinner. Her once-round cheeks now looked a little hollow, her wrists sharper than before. Clothes that once hugged her snugly now hung looser, like they belonged to someone else.

That wasn’t right.

He pieced it together slowly, stubbornly. They didn’t live in a mansion with servants and guards; their “home” was simple, all wood and old furniture. Elaine cooked, cleaned, and worked by herself. No extended family parading through the door. No visitors with gifts. Just her, doing everything. And if she was getting skinnier, there was only one reason: money was running out. Even for groceries.

“Great,” Ludger thought, chewing on his frustration along with the corner of a blanket. “Not only am I stuck as a statless baby, but my mom—my Job Master—is grinding herself down to keep me alive. This is not how the power-fantasy contract is supposed to go.”