If they catch me, they will lock me again!...
At night, the street was illuminated by street lamps; seventeen-year-old boy Karen was running away from those demons in a blue dress.
If they captured him, they would take him back to the hospital and lock him there.
He wasn’t really scared of them. He was scared of being trapped.
He turned his head and looked at them. They were slowing down, the distance between him and them getting wider.
Seeing it, Karen became happy. He stuck out his tongue, making fun of them.
Hehe..You can’t catch me. I’m fast...
"HONK! HONKk!..."
"Ah... ohh.."
Looking ahead, he saw the bright headlights of the truck. The truck was close, too close. Before it made contact with his body. Karen’s small life played in his mind.
Once, he was a normal kid like everyone else, but everything changed when he picked up the hobby of reading books- not just web novels or light novels; he stepped ahead of them and started reading something that only some wise man would read, which would make him move on the way of liberation and find him- the meaning of life.
It was the turning point of his life, when he started seeing himself and others caged by petty things.
He tried to get free and teach some stuff to his parents, and they sent him to a mental hospital.
Yeah, long story short, they sent him to a mental hospital. There, things got worse, and all he wished was to escape.
And he did it; he escaped.
"A!!!..."
He was struck by a truck weights more than fifty times then him and thrown against a concrete wall. Every bone in his body was shattered, and death embraced him.
***
When Karen opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was a dazzling light in his whole field of vision.
He blinked in discomfort.
Once his vision became clear, he saw an autumn sky and noticed the thing he was lying on was shaking and moving.
Where am I?
He thought in confusion. But most of all, he felt relieved that he wasn’t back in the hospital.
If he had opened his eyes and seen the same old white ceiling, then he wasn’t sure what he would have done; maybe start smashing his head on walls- that was all he could do or not even that.
He blinked whenever his eyes got uncomfortable, but kept gazing at the clean blue sky above him.
It’s so pretty. "Ahh! Waah!"
Huh?
Instead of the words he tried to speak, garbled whining and moaning came out of his mouth. And he wasn’t able to move his body to sit.
What the hell!!.
He finally noticed his hands were baby hands.
No way...
***
Apparently, he was reborn.
He remembered what that truck did to him, so how could he survive after that?
He also found out what that thing he was lying on was and why it was shaking earlier. It turned out he was in a basket that was floating on the river.
Did I fall from the sky in a basket?
He thought of an absurd thing, but anything was possible if reincarnation was.
And you know what was more absurd. His basket was stopped on the river’s shore, and the weird, bare-chested man with a long brown beard filled with dirt was currently carrying him in his hands, while loudly talking to the sky.
"O, Ashen Lord, how can someone be so cruel as to abandon a newborn into the river? Look at him; his black hair represents your ash, ending in beautiful curls; it appeared like your Jata to me. His big lotus amber eyes represent the sun, as lighting up my life; his soft fair skin makes me afraid to hold him in my rough hand, and yet there was someone was cruel enough to abandon him in the river. O Lord Ashen, I can see your third eye opening. But worry not, O my Lord Ashen; even if I was a thief, even if I was from a lower casta, I will raise him well. O, I name him Karna; bless him that he would cut through every challenge. No prison would be able to cage him; bless him to be a most beautiful..."
Karna didn’t understand what this man was barking and raising him toward the sky, like a monkey showing the lion cube. Yeah, that scene came to his mind.
Karen’s eyes felt heavy, shutting down on their own, though he was forcing them to stay open. He did not want to fall asleep; he wanted to know what would happen to him, though he wasn’t scared or worried.
He was more curious, which was weird; he had never been a brave type. It was more like as if this beautiful autumn sky took away his fear and all worries.
In the end, he was unable to hold on any longer; his eyes felt heavier and heavier, and finally, his eyes closed, and he fell into his baby slumber.
While the man placed him in the same basket and took him along.
When the night fell, it was the exact opposite of the day. It was raining heavily with loud thunderclaps, and the wind was blowing like it would take the huts of poor villages in its flow.
But after a scary night, the sun brought new brightness and excitement with it.
Rumors were flowing everywhere: the Supreme God- the preserver himself- incarnated as a mortal baby. That is what some Sage told them.
But it was just a rumor...
***
17 years later.