The fraud, the bum, the minor villain that everyone both in-universe and out despised.
He was a pathetic loser that served his purpose in the story as a momentary hurdle for the protagonist.
His deplorable and disgusting actions gave way to the audience’s satisfaction when he finally met his end.
No one pitied him when he finally died.
Certainly not me.
…That was the past, it was different now.
My hatred for the character remained as strong as ever, but the matter of his end was more complicated.
Whenever I thought about his death, instead of the satisfaction that I once felt, my mind became anxious and afraid.
After all, I’ve been reborn as Shinji Matou.
My throat was dry from the sheer amount of dread I felt as I stared at the nearby mirror, where the scene of a young woman with pale skin and dark brown hair craddling her young infant could be seen reflected upon its surface.
Plastered on the young woman’s face was a placid and tired expression, as though she was waiting for the worst news of her life.
I couldn’t blame her considering her situation.
She was Shina Matou, the mother whom I had inexplicably gained after the conclusion of my past life.
In that past life, I had been nothing short of a loser.
The only redeemable quality I possessed was that I had not been an arrogant, lecherous douchebag like Shinji.
My loser status originated from my lack of ambition rather than my lack of morality.
As a child, I was what you would consider gifted both academically and athletically.
Just talented enough to be far above the average, but not talented enough to be called a genius.
For a time, I was comfortable with that fact.
Too comfortable actually, so much so that my sense of comfort became indistinguishable from complacency.
After elementary school ended, I became distracted with chasing love.
Love in essence was beautiful, but the love that pre-teen me harbored was merely lustful limerence instead of actual love.
This limerence consumed me and I spent my days entirely on a girl who neither desired me in return nor ever once even noticed me.
It broke my little young heart once she chose another boy, and I became so full of hatred and spite that I completely lost my former momentum.
I stopped caring about my studies and my work.
I cared neither for my body nor my future.
The only thing I still relentlessly chased was love, but reality would not spare that version of me any love, and neither did I love myself, so I turned outward and found love from another medium.
Stories.
I became obsessed with stories.
At first, I chased the stories with similar beats to my own.
Those of teenage love.
In particular, I was entranced by anime, which had these kinds of stories in abundance.
Even if they weren’t real, they provided me with the satisfaction of what could have been, what should have been.
The love I never found in life remained fictional, but the love I found in fiction was no less than real to me.
Then I tried another genre.
After all, surely love could be found outside of the romance genre, right?
My first non-romance anime had been Fate/Stay Night Heaven’s Feel.
I chose it precisely because, although it was full of action and mystery, at its core, it was still the love story I yearned for.
I knew it was far from the recommended starting point for the Fate franchise, but I honestly couldn’t care less.
Fate/Stay Night’s animated series were just adaptations of the different routes in the visual novel, after all.
The main difference was the heroine that the protagonist pursued in each corresponding route.
Since that was the case, I simply picked the route with the heroine that suited my tastes the most.
The Heaven’s Feel route, whose main heroine was the gentle, kind-hearted Sakura Matou.
Suffice to say, it was hard for me when the darker parts of the story were unraveled.
I’ve always been a person who was easily influenced by good storytelling.
I didn’t know whether that was a good indicator of my character or not, but it was the truth.
Sakura’s backstory had simply been…
Well, shocking, to say the least.
The internet was right in not recommending the Heaven’s Feel route as a starting point.
It completely ruined all other routes because Sakura’s backstory was barely awknowledged.
It was particularly bad for me when I got to the Unlimited Blades Works route where Shinji ended up surviving through all of his hurdles and…
reconciling with Sakura to the point where they could joke around as if nothing had ever happened between them.
What was the author even thinking!?
Imagine if Griffith from Berserk had a similar ending.
Even if the blue-haired bum wasn’t nearly as cartoonishly evil as the bird-like demon lord, it still ultimately left a bad taste in my mouth.
It was so bad that, even after I had mentally moved on from Fate and explored other franchises, I occasionally found myself returning to it just to see if anyone had written a better ending for her in any of the countless fanfictions that had been released since my viewing.
So imagine the amount of bile I mustered up once I encountered a genuine Shinji × Sakura fanfiction that took place after the UBW ending.
One that didn’t even try to have Shinji own up to his actions, simply waving it off as a retroactive AU where that never occured.
Of course, I left a negative, scathing review that tore the author’s work apart.
I didn’t hold back, earnestly expressing my full distaste and asking whether the author possessed the slightest bit of human decency or not.
In my review, I swore that I could write a better story for not only Sakura but also Shinji as well than whatever bottom-of-the-barrel crap the author had cooked up.
…I even swore my life to it.
Though in hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have.
As it turned out, the other party had been an eldritch god.
Who knew?
Well, I still don’t.
That was just the theory that made the most sense to me on how all of this happened.
Not long after I made that review, my life would be extinguished by huge truck of which the driver had completely lost control, shattering my bones and painting my blood all over the pavement once the impact had occured.
The moment I had woken up from that experience, it felt as though my entire previous life had been nothing but a passing dream.
It was unsettling and despairing as I had died before I could really live, before I managed to find love.
I passed away at the age of 16.
I hadn’t even learned how to drive yet…
As if that wasn’t bad enough, I actually ended up reincarnating as this bum.
Despite hailing from an ancient Magus lineage, Shinji couldn’t be called a true Magus as he was only capable of performing rudimentary Alchemy that didn’t use Magical Energy prior to the Holy Grail War.
In this world, weakness was a true sin.
Ruthless Magi and desolate monsters roamed the shadowy side of the world, lingering at the outskirts of known society.
If I couldn’t gain strength fast, the only fate that awaited me was certain death.
Thus I desperately hoped for a cheat, something that would make my second life easier as I doubted Shinji at his base state had much potential.
After all, such things were a staple for these kinds of stories.
Whether it be a System or the soul of some old, powerful grandpa living in my head—I’d take anything at this point!
Unfortunately, no matter how much I waited, nothing answered my prayers.
…Yet my heart refused to lose hope.
It’s only been about a week since I was reborn to this world.
I shouldn’t be too hasty as to become completely hopeless.
Perhaps the System that awaited me was still downloading, or maybe the old grandpa was still slumbering…
Whatever it was, I hoped it would come around soon.
My mother’s patient silence finally paid off as the nearby door opened and in came the man she had been waiting for.
He was very much reminiscent of the future Shinji, being a Japanese man with fair skin and wavy blue hair that seemed as coily as sea weed.
His eyes were similarly blue, and he would have otherwise been attractive were it not for his naturally contemptuous expression.
This man was naturally my father, Byakuya Matou, who from what I saw from Fate/Zero, was as much of a bum as his son had been.
Byakuya didn’t inspire any despair in me, so why then did my heart start beating uncontrollably when he entered the room, why did I feel like I was back at the edge of death?
It was because of the figure that stood beside him.
He was a crooked old man with a completely bald head and a hunched posture.
His eyes were hollow of any emotion and his slight smile displayed an unsettling hint of malevolence.
The old man held a thick wooden walking stick in his hands as his gaze drifted from my mother to me.
Without a doubt, the identity of this creepy old man was clear…
Zouken Matou!