"It's too risky," a cold voice echoed through the room. "Sure, it might be profitable, but the risk is too high."
"Oh come on Reiji," a man with dark hair responded, wrapping his arm tightly around Reiji's shoulder. "You are our strategist, surely you can make something work."
"We can't threaten the finance minister with this little," Reiji responded, pushing the arm away from his shoulder. "And you know that."
He locked eyes with his partner, Kuronuma Masaki.
"No matter what you say. The answer's no."
Without waiting for a response, Reiji stepped outside and walked off to his black sedan at the curb.
He slid into the driver's seat, tossed his phone on the passenger seat, and exhaled.
Then he paused.
The mirror showed a flicker of movement, sending a shiver down his spine.
His hands reached for the glovebox.
'Too late,' he cursed, eyes locked on the black object at his window.
The window shattered and a sharp pop echoed through the car.
One shot, right behind the ear.
"Should've just done what I asked for."
That was the last thing Reiji heard as everything went dark.
For a while, there was nothing.
No pain, no sound, he couldn't even form a thought.
Then—
A deep breath.
Air flooded into his lungs like he hadn't breathed in days.
His eyes snapped open as he jolted upright.
"What…" he muttered, his heart pounding in his chest.
He froze.
The voice wasn't… his.
It sounded younger and higher.
Glancing down, his eyes widened.
His arms were thinner, and his hands… they were pale and smooth, unlike his old scarred hands.
He scrambled to his feet, but the motion threw him off, his balance completely failing him.
His legs gave out, and he collapsed onto the cold stone floor as a wave of hot vomit rose in his throat.
As he threw up, his body started sweating profusely.
"Where am I?" he whispered, gripping the ground tightly.
Lying on the cold floor, Reiji forced himself to stay calm, relying on his old training.
Carefully glancing around, he noticed the wooden walls around him and the yellow light shining down.
"Did they kidnap me?" he wondered, heart pounding.
'No,' he thought, shivering as he remembered the gun and the bullet penetrating his skull. 'There's no way.'
Before he could think any further, a bright golden light flashed in front of his eyes, forcing them shut.
As he opened his eyes again, a golden panel hung in the air.
[Legend Rating System]
Host: Arawaka Reiji
Current Rating: 0
—
Stats:
Physique: F rank
Magic Circuit Capacity: 9
Mana Pool: 100/100
Regeneration rate: 3/s
—
Fragments collected: 0
Servant: (unsummoned)
"What is all of this?" Reiji mumbled, eyes wide in confusion and shock.
He tried pushing himself away from the floating screen, but for some reason he couldn't fully control his body yet.
Time passed as Reiji calmed down.
Slowly but surely, he managed to get his body under control and even managed to sit against a wall behind him.
Filled with curiosity, he swiped his hand towards the screen.
As his fingers grazed the panel, it pulsed a bright golden light.
Suddenly, a tinier golden screen popped up in front of him.
[System acknowledged.]
[Memory Fragment Detected — Merging now…]
Without giving Reiji a chance to react, an immense pain stabbed behind his eyes.
He gritted his teeth as the world spun around him, then everything went black.
When he opened his eyes again, he was still in the same wooden room… but something felt wrong. The light was dimmer, and the smell of waste no longer entered his nose.
More importantly—he couldn't move.
"What the hell…?"
His body stood up on its own.
He watched as it grabbed a neatly folded school uniform from the thin futon and began to put it on.
Then it turned toward the digital clock on the floor beside the bed.
"Shit," the voice muttered. "I'm late again."
Reiji could only watch, trapped inside his own mind, as his body rushed out the door.
Time blurred, scene after scene flashing by from a life that wasn't his.
Just as suddenly, everything stopped.
Reiji jolted upright again, gasping, this time fully back in control of himself.
He breathed hard, trying to make sense of what he'd just seen.
'That wasn't some dream,' he thought, glancing at his hands again. 'It was a memory.'
An entire normal and dull life, nothing like his.
'He was a high school student,' Reiji thought, glancing at the school uniform thrown in the corner of the room.
His head throbbed, and his thoughts were a mess.
"That felt extremely weird and uncomfortable," he mumbled, clutching his aching head. "It was like watching someone else's life from behind a glass wall."
He clenched his jaw.
Somewhere in that memory, he'd seen a massive fire on television with countless screams and sirens in the background.
It had only lasted a few seconds, but he had seen it.
He had seen that footage before, in his previous life.
'Fuyuki City… Great fire,' he thought, mind racing. 'Where have I seen that before?'
His eyes fell on the system panel hovering beside him.
"Magic circuit? Mana?" he paused, his eyes falling on the last column. "Servant?!"
His heart dropped as memories flashed in front of his eyes.
"This can't be real… right?"
He took a slow breath, remembering a show he'd watched when he was a teen.
"This… this is Fate?"
A world where ancient heroes are summoned to fight wars over a wish-granting Grail.
He stared at the golden interface, then looked at his hands again.
It felt surreal.
"If this is really that world…" He closed his eyes and tried to focus, digging deeper into the memories that had fused with him.
He was searching for faces, names, classmates—anything.
At first it all blurred together, just normal harmless teenagers. But then, things started to change.
"Tohsaka Rin…"
That name. It wasn't just familiar.
She was top of the class, elegant and the school's number one idol.
Everyone knew of her, even the host of his previous body.
"Fuck…" Reiji said, his eyes opening again. "I'm really in the Fate world."