He wakes up to the sound of coughing.
Dry, rasping coughs from too many throats. A baby crying. A door slamming. Footsteps. Someone whispering a prayer out of habit more than faith.
His head hurts.
The ceiling above him is cracked and yellow. The air smells like dust, old wood and something boiled until it stopped pretending to be food. His body feels wrong. Smaller. Lighter. Weak.
He lifts his hands.
Thin. Bony. Too smooth. No scars he remembers.
Those aren't mine.
Memory comes in pieces, like shards of glass stuck in his thoughts: a screen glowing in the dark, binge-watching anime at 3 a.m., Hunter x Hunter on the left monitor, Bungou Stray Dogs on the right, instant noodles on the desk, the smell of cheap seasoning and loneliness. Then pain. A sudden, crushing, stupid kind of pain.
Nothing after that.
Did I seriously die watching anime?
Embarrassing. Fitting. Annoying.
"Stop moving so much," a voice mutters beside him. "You'll wake the little ones."
He turns his head. Slowly. His neck complains like it's new at this.
The boy in the next bed has a shaved head and tired eyes. The room is long, lined with metal beds and thin blankets. Children everywhere. Some asleep, some staring at nothing, some curled in on themselves.
Orphanage. Obviously.
His throat feels dry. "Where… is this?"
The boy frowns. "The orphanage. Outside the city. They found you near the river, remember? Or did the fever scramble your brain?"
He doesn't remember the river. He remembers a desk and a chest that hurt and then a hard cut to this.
He pushes himself upright. The world tilts, then steadies. His arms are weak, but they hold. He swings his legs off the bed. His feet hit cold floor, smaller and bonier than they should be.
He needs a mirror.
There's a shard nailed crookedly to the wall near the door. He walks over, ignoring how his legs shake like they're not convinced about this "standing" thing.
A small, pale face stares back at him.
Black hair, messy and wild, framing hollow cheeks. Dark eyes with deep shadows under them. His neutral expression already looks like a quiet "no" to the entire concept of life.
He stares.
"…Huh," he breathes. "You've got jokes."
It isn't exact, but the resemblance is obvious: a younger, thinner Ryūnosuke Akutagawa. Same general vibe. Less menace, more iron deficiency.
*So i died, respawned as a child, handed an edgy face as part of the starter kit.
Sure. Why not.*
"Ryu?" a woman calls from the doorway.
He turns.
A nun in a worn dress stands there, apron stained from the kitchen, eyes heavy in that way people get when they've slept but never rested. She squints at him. "You're up. Good. Breakfast soon. Try not to fall over."
Ryu.
So that's the label on this body.
He files it away and doesn't complain.
Breakfast is in a low hall with rough tables and benches. The windows look out over a strip of yard and, beyond that, buildings that don't belong to poverty exclusively. He can see tiled roofs and two- and three-story houses in the distance, clotheslines strung between balconies, smoke rising from real chimneys.
Not a slum. Just the cheap end of a decent city.
A bowl of thin gray porridge lands in front of him. His hands shake a little when he picks up the spoon.
He eats anyway. This body needs fuel, not preferences.
Voices murmur around him.
"Did you hear?" an older boy says, hunched over his bowl. "The guy at the east gate yesterday? Came in leading that thing on a chain."
"He was a Hunter," another whispers. "Had a license and everything. Guard said he's getting paid more Jenny for that job than we'll ever see."
"Jenny…" someone sighs. "Must be nice."
Ryu's spoon pauses a fraction of a second.
Hunter.
He keeps his eyes on the porridge and his ears open.
"One of the traders said Hunters can take the fast trains for free," the first boy continues. "Just show the card and walk through. They can go anywhere. Other cities, other countries, places beyond the borders…"
"Jenny?" Ryu hears himself say, quiet but audible.
The shaved-head boy from his room glances sideways at him. "Money," he says. "You really did fry your brain."
Hunter. License. Jenny. Fast trains. Association.
His pulse ticks up. It could still be coincidence. It really shouldn't be.
He forces himself to swallow the mouthful, slow and steady, and not stare at anyone.
There are a lot of fantasy worlds. There is exactly one he knows where "Hunter" and "Jenny" and "fast trains" in the same sentence point to something very specific.
He wants proof.
After breakfast, the older kids get waved toward the yard. He goes with them.
The orphanage yard is fenced, but beyond the boards the city spreads out properly this time: a paved street, not just dirt; people walking in actual shoes; carriages and a handful of small, ugly trucks rumbling past. Further ahead the buildings grow taller, packed closer, climbing up a gentle slope. Signs hang over shopfronts. Wires cross the sky. This isn't some forgotten village. It's a minor city with delusions of importance.
Nailed to the wall by the door is a poster he noticed earlier from a distance.
He walks closer like he has nothing better to do. Kids drift to the patch of weak sunlight or kick at stones. Nobody cares about one more boy looking at paper.
The poster is old. Sun-bleached, edges curled. But the emblem in the center is still clear: a stylized cross-like mark inside a circle.
His chest tightens.
He knows that symbol. Not from here, but from screens and fanart and too many late-night wiki dives.
Hunter Association.
His eyes track the remaining text.
"Become a Hunter. Wealth, status and access to restricted areas. Applications accepted at the nearest Association branch…"
That does it.
Any sensible doubt stages a small protest and dies.
This is the Hunter x Hunter world.