The world came back in fragments.
A dull ache behind his eyes. The scratchy dryness in his throat that always lingered after a bad cold. The faint smell of tatami mats and incense.
He blinked slowly, expecting the familiar ceiling of his apartment. The faint glow of sunlight sneaking through half broken blinds, or the smell of peeling drywall.
Instead, he was greeted with an unfamiliar ceiling. Scratch that, the whole room was unfamiliar. This room alone was bigger than his entire apartment.
The futon beneath him was thin but impeccably neat. His body felt... wrong. Smaller. Lighter. As he sat up, he lifted a hand to rub his eyes and froze.
The hand was tiny. Chubby fingers, smooth unscarred skin. The kind of small, delicate hand that belonged to a child no older than three or four.
Panic spiked sharp and cold in his chest.
'What the fuck?'
He stared at those little hands, turning them over as if they might belong to someone else. They didn't.
'This has to be a dream. A really vivid fever dream. Any second now, I'll wake up.'
Before he could test the theory by pinching himself, the sliding door opened with a soft rasp.
A young woman in a simple grey kimono stepped inside, carrying a tray with a bowl and cloth. She looked barely older than twenty, her movements quick and practised. When her eyes landed on him sitting up, they widened.
"Tetsuya Zenin-sama!" She gasped, nearly dropping the tray. She hurried forward, knelt beside the futon, and pressed the back of her hand gently to his forehead.
"You're awake... Do you feel any better? Your fever broke during the night, but we were so worried!"
On a normal day, he might have caught the fearful undertone in her voice. But right now, he was concerned with something else entirely.
'Tetsuya. Tetsuya?'
That didn't ring any bells.
But the other name hit like a slap.
'Zenin? Did she just call me a fucking Zenin? As in THE Zenin clan?'
He opened his mouth, but no sound came out.
The servant's face paled at his silence, mistaking it for annoyance. She bowed low, touching her forehead to the tatami.
"F-forgive me, young master. I spoke out of turn. I'll fetch someone at once!"
She scrambled backwards, slid the door open, and fled like she'd seen a curse manifest in the room. The door shut with a quiet click.
He sat there, heart hammering in his chest, staring at the empty space where she'd been.
"This is definitely a dream." he mumbled.
Tetsuya Zenin-sama.
He hadn't misheard. The honorific, the fear in her voice it was unmistakable.
But he wasn't Tetsuya. He couldn't be.
Except... he clearly was.
'Wait. Who am I?'
Panic clawed higher as he searched for memories of his life and found nothing concrete. He knew for a fact he wasn't a Zenin. He'd had a job. Had people close to him. He knew these memories existed. Yet, it was like there was a blank canvas, where they should be.
Ask him anything about his mother, and he'd be unable to answer.
But ask him how exactly Infinity worked, and you'd get a nerdy, half hour lecture on how exactly you could bypass it, or why Hollow Purple wasn't true existence erasure.
Hell, ask him anything about his hobbies, or whatever, and he could remember Crystal clear.
It was as if all the substance of his personal memories had been wiped clean, leaving only the trivial knowledge intact.
He looked down at his small hands, flexing the fingers. They moved obediently, but they weren't his. Not really.
'Okay. Deep breaths. If this is some isekai bullshit, there are rules.'
"System?" he whispered. "Stat panel? Information? Specs?"
Nothing.
'No system. No golden finger. Just me, stuck as some unknown Zenin bum.'
The door slid open again, harder this time, yanking him from his spiralling thoughts.
He looked up, and every thought in his head flatlined.
Standing in the doorway was a broad shouldered man in black traditional robes, arms crossed, and his face held an expression somewhere between annoyance and impatience.
He had a set of Black, long hair that made you think of a bear, a face with sharp features, and, of course, the unmistakable air of someone who could kill without blinking.
Jinichi Zenin.
Not the corpse from the latest episode he had just watched, where Maki had brutally executed the Zenin clan.
A clan he was now apparently part of.
This Jinichi looked younger, maybe late twenties or early thirties. No forehead scar yet.
Just a living, breathing, pissed off Zenin.
Two older servant women hovered behind him in the hallway, heads bowed so low they practically kissed the floor.
Jinichi's eyes narrowed on him.
"Oi, brat. You finally awake. Took long enough."
The voice was deep and rough, exactly like the few lines he'd heard in the anime.
Tetsuya, he supposed that was his name now, barely managed a weak nod, his throat too tight to speak.
Jinichi snorted. "No son of mine should have gotten sick in the first place. Pathetic."
He jerked his chin toward the servants without looking at them. "Get him ready. He stinks. Bathe him, dress him properly, then bring him to the training grounds. We're already behind schedule."
He turned and walked off without waiting for a reply, footsteps heavy and unhurried.
The two women swept in immediately, efficient and silent. One lifted him under the arms like he weighed nothing, while the other gathered fresh clothes and a wooden basin of warm water that had been waiting just outside, likely for his bath.
The only difference was that he was awake for it.
They worked quickly, stripping off the sweaty yukata, sponging him down with practised, efficient strokes.
He sat there, mind racing, as they dried him and began layering new clothes.
First, a white under robe. Then a black kimono with stiff, ornate shoulders. It was heavy and too formal for a child, in his opinion.
A dark hakama was tied securely around his waist, followed by a short haori jacket in a deep dark green, embroidered with the Zenin crest on the back. Even the obi was thick, patterned with subtle silver threads.
He looked like a miniature Naoya. Though technically, they should be around the same age, given how young Jinichi looked.
When they finished, one servant tied his short black hair back with a simple cord while the other slipped low geta sandals onto his feet.
They each took one of his hands, gentle but slightly fearful, no doubt thanks to his new father and led him out of the room, down polished wooden corridors.
Paper screens slid past. Glimpses of manicured gardens. Distant sounds of clacking wooden practice swords.
If he didn't know better, this would seem like a very nice, relaxing place.
His pulse, however, thundered in his ears.
'Jinichi Zenin. My... father. A Hei member. The guy Maki turns into paste in... what, a decade or two from now?'
"Fuck me. Fuck me bloody." he muttered.
The servants glanced at him.
"Is something wrong, Zenin sama?"
He swallowed hard. How exactly was he supposed to survive here?
"No. It's nothing."
He hated how squeaky his voice sounded.