It felt strange, like I was floating in a warm ocean. Gentle water all around me, wrapped in kindness, and I didn't feel like I was suffocating at all. It was as if gravity had simply let go of me, and I felt light.
As I drifted in that warmth, the water suddenly turned rough. The loving sea around me got pulled away, and it got harder to breathe.
I panicked at the sudden change and couldn't stay still. I struggled hard, trying to go back toward the warmth.
I saw a light up ahead. It grew bigger and brighter, but something like a rope wrapped around my body and held me back, refusing to let me go toward it.
Let me go! I have to get out of here! I have to go back to that warm sea!
I fought hard, searching for the exit, but I couldn't breathe.
Then the wall that had been crushing me disappeared, and I felt like I got thrown outside into open air.
It's bright!
And then the cold hit me all at once.
It hurts!
I gasped and dragged in a huge breath, desperate for air.
"Waaah......Waaah!"
My mind woke up fast, all at once.
It looks like I got reborn.
Two years have passed since I was reborn.
Right after I figured out that I had been reborn, I got extremely sleepy and passed out again. I remember hearing something like voices near my ear and feeling lukewarm water washing over my body, so the birth itself went fine.
After that, for a long while, my life was just drink milk, sleep, get held, poop, drink milk, sleep, poop, cry, sleep, cry at night, drink milk, sleep, over and over. I remembered my past life perfectly clear, but I couldn't fight those urges. I had the memories and I was still a baby, so there was nothing I could do about it. A baby with a grown-up's mind.
Somewhere in the middle of all that, two years went by. At first it was really rough, since I couldn't hold back any of the urges. I got hungry fast, I soiled myself, and on top of that I got sleepy every five minutes. I only had two feelings, good and bad, so I pretty much just cried or slept.
Lately my mind has settled down some and I can hold back my feelings, but it was rough until I got used to all of it. I felt bad for my mom and dad getting woken up in the middle of the night, since I let out some enormous messes and gnawed hard on my mom's nipples with my toothless gums. Thanks to that, my mom's pretty pink nipples got a little dull. She used to be young and cute.
Anyway, now I'm two years old. I calmed down some, and even though I stumble over my words, I can handle simple everyday talk just fine.
"Mama, I wanna eat ao -"
My voice broke off mid-word, and I held out my hands.
"Oh, Haru," my mom said with a warm smile. "Do you want a Rango fruit?"
"Wanna eat rango," I nodded.
A Rango fruit is like an apple back on Earth. The taste and the feel of it are just like an apple, but for some reason the color is a nasty bright blue. (My slurring is because I'm a toddler. Cut me some slack!)
All my teeth are in now, so I can chew hard things like Rango just fine. This world doesn't have much sweet stuff, so Rango fruit is one of the few natural sweets around. I love it.
My mom called me "Haru" just now, but that isn't my real name. My real name is "Eberhard Karlheinz von Flensburg Fahrenheit" - stupidly long. The "von" in there tells you what you would guess: I got reborn into a noble family. Right off the bat, I'm winning at life. Maybe God liked what I did in my last life, because I ended up far away from strict family rules and inheritance drama. I got a real comfortable life as a baby.
My dad is only twenty-five, which is really young, but he already acts like a proper head of the Count Fahrenheit Frontier family, a noble title meaning he owns land and has authority over the people living on it. I never had a dad I could respect in my last life, so it feels a little weird.
My mom is twenty-two, three years younger than my dad. I have a sister two years older than me, so mom had her at eighteen. Pretty rare back in modern Japan. Mom has white skin and blonde hair, and she looks like a Nordic beauty. Judging by how my four-year-old sister looks, and she is seriously cute even to a guy who is almost twenty on the inside, I'm probably a real handsome boy too. But man, thinking about how I've been sucking on the nipples of a woman who is my own mental age, that is a lot of guilt. A baby doesn't get turned on or anything.
So I made it to the age where I can walk on my own. But I didn't just eat and sleep for two years. Okay, mostly I did. I did check a lot of things to see if this really was another world.
The biggest one is the status screen, a private panel of numbers and labels that only I can see. If there were some kind of [Appraisal] skill, like the ones in fantasy novels that show you a person's stats, maybe someone could peek at another person's screen. At least me and my family don't have that kind of power. My sister was begging my mom to show her status, so I'm sure.
This is my status.
=== STATUS ===
Eberhard Karlheinz von Flensburg Fahrenheit
Sex: Male
Age: 2
Life: 12/12
Mana: 6354/6354
Physical Ability: 3
Intelligence: 120
Magic Attribute: None
Innate Magic: [Impact]
Innate Skill: [Persistence Pays Off]
=== END STATUS ===
An intelligence of 120 is far beyond anything a normal person should have. No wonder I could place second in the whole year.
Trivia:
- Haru's mana of 6354 is wildly higher than his life of 12 and physical ability of 3, hinting that his real strength is magical even as a toddler.
- His intelligence of 120 versus a normal two-year-old is the status screen quietly confirming his past-life memories are boosting his mind.
- The "von" in his name is dropped casually in narration, but it is the single word that locks in his noble status and everything that comes with it.
Notes:
• Haru - Alias for protagonist. Reborn as Eberhard Karlheinz von Flensburg Fahrenheit, a two-year-old noble of the Fahrenheit Frontier Count family. Retains full memories of a past life on Earth. Has a status screen only he can see, with an innate magic called Impact and an innate skill called Persistence Pays Off. Loves Rango fruit. Has a four-year-old sister and a father aged 25 and mother aged 22.