Chapter 1: The Reborn Transmigrator
"Ugh."
Andrew Sanchez sat up in bed, staring blankly at the wall. It wasn't that his hangover hadn't cleared — it was that he was wrestling with a deeply philosophical question.
Who am I?
If it were twenty-one years ago, when he was still living on another version of Earth, he could have confidently told you his name was James Holloway.
Now, he needed to give that some serious thought.
James Holloway had died suddenly on that other Earth, and without any memories, had spent twenty-one years living a completely different yet strangely familiar life on this one — in America, specifically right here in Los Angeles.
A month ago, Andrew Sanchez's single father, Evan Sanchez, died on impact in a drunk driving accident. Mercifully, he hadn't hit anyone — just plowed his car into a concrete divider at over a hundred miles an hour, leaving the paramedics with nothing worth saving.
After a month of stumbling through life in a fog, Andrew went on a serious bender, and that bender did something unexpected — it cracked open James Holloway's buried memories and, along with them, the strange gift he'd apparently carried into this life:
A small skill proficiency panel.
[Guitar: Beginner][English: Proficient][Spanish: Proficient]
According to the panel's system, all skills fell into five levels: Beginner, Proficient, Mastered, Expert, and Grandmaster. The fact that both of his languages were sitting at just Proficient told him everything he needed to know — most of the abilities he thought he had weren't even good enough to show up on the board.
Andrew wasn't really in the headspace to dig into all of that. What was eating at him more was the strange identity crisis that came with the flood of James's memories washing over his own, dulling the sharp edges of his grief and leaving him feeling like a stranger in his own skin.
Evan Sanchez had been a Grade-A deadbeat father — but he had raised Andrew through high school before essentially checking out entirely.
Which meant the version of Andrew who existed before the memories woke up had finished high school with terrible grades and done absolutely nothing with himself since. No job. No plan. No ambition.
Just mooching.
For all his faults as a father, Evan Sanchez was the classic American rags-to-something story — grew up in the foster care system, pulled himself up by sheer nerve and a decent amount of natural talent. Well, some talent. Enough talent mixed with enough charm and hustle to sell his first pop song while still in high school, stumble through a mid-tier music program, and make a living peddling tracks to anyone who'd buy them.
Drinking, gambling, women, and cigarettes — the man collected vices like baseball cards.
Andrew had come along by accident, and fatherhood hadn't exactly reformed Evan. He'd throw money at the problem when he had it, and occasionally, when he was sober, you'd catch a glimpse of something almost warm in him. But those moments were rare. Andrew could count the sober ones on both hands going back as far as he could remember.
It wasn't a close relationship, but it wasn't a cold one either. When Evan died, Andrew had genuinely grieved — otherwise he wouldn't have drunk himself half to death trying to outrun it.
It's worth mentioning that, despite everything, Andrew had always had a certain quiet self-discipline about him — some instinct left over from his other life. No bad habits, no addictions. His body was a little rough from years of skipping meals and living on whatever was cheap, but he was still a good-looking guy. Lean, sharp-featured. The kind of face that made bartenders give him a second look.
But now, with James's memories flooding in, the grief had thinned out, replaced by something more complicated — a detached, almost clinical distance that he couldn't quite shake.
"Whatever happens, I've got to keep moving," Andrew told himself. His stomach growled and pulled him back to earth.
"One... two... three... seventy-five cents."
He dug through his jeans, then the nightstand drawer, and came up with exactly three quarters. That was it. That was the whole fortune. Starvation was starting to feel like a real possibility.
He couldn't help resenting his past self a little.
The Andrew who'd existed before the memories woke up had been, by any fair measure, a washout. A product of too-easy schooling and zero supervision — looked decent on the outside, nothing going on underneath. He'd picked up guitar in high school during a rebellious phase, figuring if his old man could do it, so could he. Three years of half-hearted practice later, and the skill panel had him filed under Beginner. That said it all.
In the three years since graduating, pre-awakening Andrew had done nothing except live off Evan and play occasional sets at a dive bar a few blocks from the apartment. The bar owner, Gunther, had hired him mainly because he was cheap — fifty bucks a night — and most of the time all he had to do was sit on a stool and strum background music. Gunther had actually pulled him aside once and specifically asked him not to sing.
So when Evan died and the money stopped, Andrew had blown through his savings in a month, then hit the bottle, woke up with a skull-splitting hangover, and left this whole disaster for the new Andrew to clean up.
And the money wasn't even the worst of it.
Evan had died leaving behind a mystery amount of debt and the lease to this apartment. But there was inheritance tax, property tax, and a stack of unpaid medical bills to deal with before any of it could be called his.
Yesterday afternoon, a court summons had arrived. Not for tax evasion — Evan had never been organized enough for that kind of crime. This was a judge's inquiry to determine whether Andrew was legally eligible to inherit the apartment at all. The one saving grace was that Evan had no other family, having aged out of the foster care system alone. If there'd been relatives in the picture, Andrew wouldn't have even had that much.
After the hearing, he'd have nine months to settle the taxes and officially take ownership of the place. A significant part of yesterday's drinking had been the previous Andrew fully expecting to lose the apartment and have to start completely from scratch somewhere far away.
"Alright," Andrew picked up the crumpled summons from the floor and turned it over in his hands. "Court's not until Monday. It's Wednesday. And Evan didn't have anybody else — so whose apartment would it even go to? Worst case, I inherit the debts too."
His stomach growled again, loud and insistent.
"Right. Food first."
He still felt something for Evan, even now. The man had kept him fed and housed for eighteen years, and that counted for something. And with this panel — this strange gift he'd apparently brought with him across lifetimes — maybe he could actually find a way to keep the apartment and dig himself out. Without the panel he'd have sold without a second thought and moved somewhere cheap. Even with it, the tax situation was going to be brutal. But he'd work it out. One thing at a time.
He dug through a pile of laundry on the floor, pulled out the two least-offensive shirts, and got dressed. Brushed his teeth. Splashed water on his face.
"You've got this, man."
He pointed at himself in the bathroom mirror. If it really came down to it — if music didn't pan out — he was in decent shape, and with this face, there were worse fallback plans. Acting. Modeling. Something. He wasn't above it.
But first, seventy-five cents and a rumbling stomach. Los Angeles wasn't going to conquer itself.
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