The air reeked of coal smoke and copper—ironically sweet, bitter, and old. He remembered a fistfight, somewhere in the back of his mind. Something loud. A laugh. Blood on white shoes.
Then came darkness.
Not the cinematic kind with swelling violins or ominous finality, but a suffocating, numbing one. Silence like thick velvet over his ears. He tried to open his mouth and speak, to curse or laugh or demand answers. Nothing came. Until—
"District 11, get in line!"
The voice wasn't familiar, but the tone was. Authority. Bored, cruel, impatient. His eyes blinked open—not that he remembered shutting them—and the world was glaring, sunlit, and loud. He wasn't lying down. He was standing. Surrounded by children, teenagers mostly, all wearing the same patched, sun-faded clothes. There was dirt under his nails. His hands were calloused.
He staggered forward, catching a glimpse of his reflection in a dented water trough. Blond hair. Sharp features. Eyes that looked carved out of marble. A smirk threatening to form even when there was nothing to smirk about.
Goo Kim.
He was Goo Kim.
And he was in The Hunger Games.
What the hell? he thought, rubbing his temple. But the action felt too natural, too routine. His mind buzzed with two timelines, two sets of memories. One where he was a Korean delinquent with a taste for chaos and violence, a top-tier fighter in a world of body-swapping and secret organizations. The other... a grain farmer's son in a world where children were sent to die for entertainment.
He'd been reborn.
And Panem, it seemed, had no idea who it was dealing with.