Waga na wa Haruki Saionji.
Chotto matte.
E... to...
Nani o hanaseba ii desu ka?
Ara, gomen.
No, don't worry about the language. My apologies. Since this story takes place in Japan, it was easier to speak in the native language. Anyway, my name is Haruki Saionji. I was just an ordinary kid, born into an ordinary family. My father works in a company, and my mother does housework. They love each other. My father performs well, there's no big boss harassing him, and my mom hardly ever rides the train, so nothing to worry about. (You guys understand, right?)
Nothing strange. Life's steady. What a wonderful family.
But you know, this is a story. Something has to happen, right? (If not, you wouldn't be reading this, obviously.) There is always something that must go wrong. I don't know... maybe you save a girl and get tensei-ed (reincarnated) into another world as a hero? Or a programmer forgets to add a logout button to a VR game? Or a 50-foot titan eats your mom? I mean, you get the point. Something always has to happen in a great story.
Well, in this one, that something is... (dramatic music)... me. Ta-da.
Eh... Me? Why?
Well, for no particular reason, I was born with an extraordinary brain. I can think really fast.
Ayo, come on, give me some interested faces. This is the main premise of the story. Jeez, show some respect.
Every superhero has an origin story, and so do I. Here's mine:
A baby in the hands of adoring parents. You know how that feels, right?
"Wow, what a wonderful life, gu gu gaga," you know, baby thoughts. Until a crazy old lady kidnapped me and left me inside an elevator. Don't ask me why. Ask her. You can probably guess the result. A baby in an elevator? Bye-bye peaceful life.
At the very last moment of my extremely short baby life, I thought. I thought like I would never get another chance to think, "What lies beneath death?" Humans are born, breathe in and out, do stupid stuff, and die. So, what's the meaning of life then? Death?
This might sound crazy, but you know how they say life flashes before your eyes in the face of death? Well, since I hadn't lived a life yet, maybe that's how flashbacks work for babies. But things got really ridiculous. I mean, why was this taking so long? Are there traffic jams in the afterlife?
After waiting for several hours in the afterlife queue, I ran out of patience. Whoever is organizing the afterlife, it's time they felt the wrath of mighty Me (at that time, I still couldn't remember my baby name). So I opened my eyes and, surprisingly, I was in my baby bed with baby toys in the baby room.
Huh? Was I dreaming? Hallucinating? Did I use too much baby oil? I was confused, man. Maybe when people die, they start over again? But then, why doesn't anyone remember their past life? I did. Maybe I have an extraordinarily good memory.
But there was one tiny problem. I couldn't count dates yet, so I didn't know when the old lady would come for me. After dying five times in that elevator, I finally learned to count dates and predict exactly when she'd come. The next step? Create a plot armor to prevent it from happening.
Sounds easy, right? After 20 failed attempts at plotting, I finally managed to convince my mom that I was sick so she wouldn't go out shopping and leave me home alone. (Tip for students: use onions.)
But that didn't last long. That old dinosaur came the next day, and this time she didn't forget me in the elevator. I had to reset before things got worse, so I jumped out of the taxi and restarted again.
After countless resets, I finally managed to beat the old lady with a stick and got back home for dinner.
Then I started living my life, got killed, reset again, tried to prevent it, got killed in another event, reset again, and so on. That cycle happened thousands, maybe millions of times (I didn't count). In all those lives, I've been everywhere, had every job, met all kinds of people, and died in every possible way. I've lived every imaginable lifestyle, and all that's left now are memories.
Now, I don't even have to think. My brain has lived for what feels like millions of years. I can process all possible outcomes and favorable scenarios of an event within a millisecond.
Well, according to Einstein, time is relative, and from my perspective, everything is normal. But to others, I think really fast. That's it.
So what do I get out of this? A boring life that's been pre-planned. Not by my parents, but by me—at the age of four. I mean, after living this long, what else could I do as a baby besides think? Oh, right. I could sneak into my parents' room at night and scare the crap out of them.
You might think I'm having fun living like this, and maybe I am. But there's a catch: I've never lived past 30. Somehow, I always die between 25 and 30.
Why? At first, it was small crimes or reckless accidents. That's fine; I could prevent those with plot armor. (Because I AM BADMAN! Whoosh!) But in my late twenties, things got out of hand: war, zombie crisis, AI takeovers, alien invasions, pollution, plastic, huge floods. I mean, I could survive one crisis, but when they come one after another, it's a whole different story.
I've tried every solution. Nothing worked. This time, only one option remains. If this doesn't work, I don't know what will.
Every time I die, I find it harder to ignore the greatest art of Homo Sapiens: the art of destroying. All my resettled lives failed because of humans—the original cancer cells of Mother Earth.
So, my last and best solution is to take over the world before aliens, zombies, or AI do. Yes, you heard that right. I must conquer the world using my memories.
Come on, don't look at me like that. I'm not aiming for "Best Villain of the Year." But hey, it's better than wiping out half the population.
And so begins my babyhood conquest planning.
After six years of pretending to be a baby (which, for me, felt like 150 years), I finally got the chance to begin my world domination plan. Or so I thought.
The plan? Follow all previous steps, do everything important to stay alive until 30 (my longest lifespan), and while repeating my actions from past lives, secretly plot world domination.
In one of my past lives, I heard of a brain chip implant project that was partially successful. Mind the word partially, because those chips were eventually infected by a hyper-coded virus created by AI and literally took over the world. My plan is to find that virus first and use it to control everyone, then make them fix the world before i**e.**t's too late.
But first, I need a massive amount of money. And I'm going to use all my past knowledge to become rich.
And you ask how I'm going to do that?
Ha. Watch, kids.
Road to Billionaire starts right here!
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