The fluorescent lights above Ryo's desk hummed like dying insects, casting their sickly glow across spreadsheets that had long since blurred together into meaningless columns of numbers. His fingers moved mechanically across the keyboard, muscle memory guiding each keystroke while his mind drifted somewhere far away from the suffocating gray walls of the accounting department.
Three-seventeen in the morning. The office building was a tomb, populated only by the walking dead who'd forgotten what sunlight looked like. Ryo fell squarely into that category, though he'd stopped caring about the distinction between living and dying sometime around his second year at Yamamoto Industries.
"Nakamura, you still here?" The voice belonged to Sato, his supervisor, who looked as exhausted as Ryo felt. Dark circles ringed the man's eyes, and his usually pristine shirt was wrinkled beyond salvation.
"Yeah," Ryo replied without looking up. "Just finishing the quarterly projections for the Osaka branch."
Sato let out a bitter laugh. "You know they're going to change everything tomorrow, right? All this work, and Yamamoto-san will decide he wants different metrics entirely."
Ryo's hands paused over the keyboard. He knew. Of course he knew. It was the same cycle every quarter, every month, every goddamn week. Build something, tear it down, build it again. The hamster wheel of corporate existence, spinning endlessly toward nothing.
"Probably," he said, resuming his typing. "But what else am I going to do?"
The question hung in the air between them, heavy with unspoken truths. Neither of them had anywhere else to go. This job was their life, their identity, their prison. They'd traded their souls for steady paychecks and health insurance, and now they were too old, too tired, too broken to imagine anything different.
Sato clapped him on the shoulder. "Don't stay too late. Even us zombies need sleep."
"Sure thing."
But Ryo didn't move from his chair as his supervisor's footsteps faded down the corridor. The building settled around him with small creaks and sighs, the sounds of a structure slowly dying from neglect and overuse. Kind of like himself, he supposed.
He'd been at this desk for eight years. Eight years of twelve-hour days, weekend work, and sleeping at the office more often than at home. His apartment was a storage unit for clothes he barely wore and food that expired before he could eat it. His life had become this chair, this computer, these endless spreadsheets that meant nothing to anyone.
When was the last time he'd laughed? Really laughed, not the hollow chuckle he gave when Sato made his tired jokes about corporate life. When was the last time he'd felt... anything?
The cursor blinked at him from the screen, waiting for input. Always waiting. The numbers demanded attention, corrections, adjustments. The machine required feeding, and he was the food.
Ryo leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. Just for a moment. Just to rest them.
The sharp pain in his chest hit like a sledgehammer, driving the air from his lungs in a strangled gasp. His left arm went numb, fingers tingling as his vision blurred. The fluorescent lights seemed to pulse in rhythm with his racing heart, which felt like it was trying to hammer its way out of his ribcage.
Heart attack. The words formed in his mind with cold clarity. This was how it ended, then. Not with fanfare or meaning, but alone in an empty office at three in the morning, surrounded by work that would be forgotten before his body was cold.
He tried to reach for his phone, but his arm wouldn't obey. The pain spread across his chest like wildfire, and darkness crept in from the edges of his vision. His last coherent thought was almost funny in its banality: he hoped someone would remember to water the sad little plant on his windowsill.
Then there was nothing.
---
Consciousness returned slowly, like surfacing from deep water. Ryo became aware of warmth first, then the sensation of silk against his skin. Silk? He'd never owned anything made of silk in his life.
His eyes opened to unfamiliar surroundings. Stone walls, not the cheap drywall of his apartment. A window with actual glass, not the plastic security windows of corporate housing. Sunlight streamed through it, warm and golden, nothing like the harsh fluorescents he'd grown accustomed to.
He sat up slowly, his body feeling strange. Younger, somehow. Stronger. The chronic back pain from years of hunching over a desk was gone, replaced by the fluid ease of a body that had never known the weight of constant stress.
The room was clearly expensive. Rich tapestries hung from the walls, depicting hunting scenes and heraldic symbols he didn't recognize. The bed beneath him was massive, carved from dark wood and draped with curtains that probably cost more than his yearly salary had been.
Had been. Past tense. Because he was dead, wasn't he? The heart attack, the office, the slow fade to black. Unless this was a hospital room, which seemed unlikely given the medieval decor.
A soft knock interrupted his confused thoughts. "Master Ryo? Are you awake?"
The voice was young, female, and spoke with an accent he couldn't place. Before he could respond, the door opened to reveal a girl who couldn't have been older than sixteen. She wore a simple brown dress and carried a tray laden with food that smelled incredible.
"Oh, good! You're finally up." She bustled into the room with practiced efficiency, setting the tray on a nearby table. "Your father was beginning to worry. You've been sleeping for three days straight."
Father? Ryo opened his mouth to explain that there must be some mistake, but what came out surprised him.
"Three days? I feel like I could sleep for three more."
The words weren't his own, yet they came from his throat in a voice that was familiar but different. Younger, like his body. The girl laughed, a bright sound that seemed to banish shadows from the room.
"That's what your brothers said you'd say. Lord Marcus thinks you're just being lazy again, but Lady Catherine insisted we let you rest." She began arranging the food on the table with careful precision. "Though between you and me, I think she's just happy to have an excuse to baby her youngest."
Youngest. Brothers. Father. None of this made sense, but the memories were there when he reached for them. Fragments of a life that wasn't his own, yet felt as real as his years at Yamamoto Industries. A nobleman's son in a world that didn't have fluorescent lights or spreadsheets. A world where magic was real and adventure waited beyond every horizon.
A world where he was known as the family disappointment.
"Anna," he said, the maid's name coming to him unbidden. "What day is it?"
"The fifteenth of Goldfall, Master Ryo. The day of your awakening ceremony."
The awakening ceremony. Another borrowed memory surfaced, bringing with it a mixture of dread and resignation. The day when young nobles received their systems, their classes, their destinies. The day that would determine his place in the world.
Ryo swung his legs over the side of the bed, marveling at how easy the movement felt. In his previous life, getting out of bed had been a production involving careful stretching and mental preparation. Now his body obeyed without complaint, strong and limber and alive in ways he'd forgotten were possible.
"Master Ryo?" Anna's voice carried a note of concern. "Are you feeling alright? You seem... different."
Different. Yes, he supposed he was. Two lives worth of memories sat uneasily in his skull, like oil and water refusing to mix. The exhausted corporate drone and the disappointing noble son, neither of whom had ever amounted to much of anything.
"I'm fine," he lied, moving to the window. The view beyond was breathtaking. Rolling hills stretched to the horizon, dotted with forests and farmland that looked like something from a fairy tale. No concrete, no smog, no towering monuments to human misery. Just clean air and open sky and the promise of a world where anything was possible.
A world where he had a second chance.
"Your father expects you in the great hall within the hour," Anna continued, apparently satisfied with his answer. "The awakening stone has been prepared, and the family priest is ready to conduct the ceremony."
The awakening stone. Ryo nodded, though his stomach clenched with familiar anxiety. In this world, the ceremony would determine his magical abilities, his potential class, his future. In his old world, every day had been a ceremony of sorts, determining his worth through quarterly reviews and performance metrics.
Both systems existed to categorize people, to put them in boxes and tell them what they were worth. The only difference was the packaging.
"Anna," he said slowly, "what happens if someone's awakening goes... poorly?"
The maid's cheerful expression faltered slightly. "Well, Master Ryo, there are always opportunities for those who work hard, regardless of their initial gifts. Your father has connections throughout the kingdom, and—"
"That's not what I asked."
His tone was sharper than he'd intended, cutting through her diplomatic response like a blade. Anna's eyes widened, and she took a small step backward.
"Forgive me, Master Ryo. I didn't mean to presume." She wrung her hands nervously. "It's just that your brothers both received such powerful awakenings, and the expectations..."
"Are high. I know." Ryo turned away from the window, studying his reflection in a polished mirror mounted on the wall. The face looking back at him was younger than his memories suggested it should be, with sharp features and intelligent eyes that belonged to someone who'd never spent years staring at spreadsheets.
This was his chance. A clean slate in a world where magic was real and adventures waited around every corner. He could be anyone, do anything. The possibilities were endless.
The awakening ceremony would begin soon, and with it, his new life would truly start. Whether that life would be better or worse than his old one remained to be seen.
But it would certainly be different.
And for the first time in longer than he could remember, Ryo felt something stir in his chest that might have been hope.