Victor’s mind worked rapidly as he tried to process the absolute mess currently unfolding inside his skull.
The first thing he realized was that he hadn’t transmigrated in the traditional sense; he had actually reincarnated.
He hadn’t hijacked some random kid’s body.
He was the kid.
The brutal collision on the football pitch had simply acted like a blunt-force decryption key, unlocking thirty-plus years of a miserable past life on Earth.
‘Great.
Am I supposed to be grateful to the guy who tackled me now?’ Victor thought, his mental sigh carrying the weight of two lifetimes.
‘Should I send him a thank-you note for giving me a concussion and an existential crisis?’
‘But at least I didn’t get shoved into a random person’s body.’ He added with relief.
Trying to process two entirely different lifetimes at once was a logistical nightmare.
When you grow up in a world, you just accept its weirdness without question.
It’s just how things are.
But looking at his current life through the lens of a cynical, exhausted Earthling?
This world was a completely different brand of bizarre.
In fact, as Victor sorted through his freshly unlocked memories, one realization struck him above all else.
This world was kind of magical.
Now, don’t get it twisted.
It wasn’t like Harry Potter or Lord of the Mysteries.
At a glance, the society around him looked strikingly similar to Earth, but it possessed one massive, world-altering quirk: the humans here could project vivid, holographic images into the air using nothing but sound energy.
His revived brain automatically dug up the official textbook term for it: the Law of Synesthetic Resonance.
According to the laws of physics in this universe, humans had sound energy, and this energy possessed a unique property that allowed music to weave zero-delay holographic images.
These projections had absolutely zero physical attack power.
You couldn’t shoot a fireball or conjure a spectral sword to chop someone’s head off.
The ability was purely visual, generated primarily through a person’s voice, though it could be weakly produced through touch.
So, no.
There were no legendary tales of a musician singing a song so perfectly that their rival’s head exploded.
Instead, this weird evolutionary trait had completely molded civilization through soft power, psychological manipulation, and art.
To the people of this world, manifesting indistinct images in the air while singing was as natural as breathing, walking, or regretting your life choices on a Tuesday morning.
Yet, it was precisely because of this musical magic that humanity had achieved a level of technology that made Earth look prehistoric.
The humans of this world had actually managed to colonize their entire solar system.
Currently, the Great Resonance Federation occupied seven different planets that all somehow shared the exact same orbit.
Don’t ask Victor how the orbital mechanics of that worked; he knew there was a scientific explanation buried somewhere in his high school textbooks, but his concussed brain currently lacked the cognitive budget to care.
All he knew was that each of those seven planets was packed with billions of people.
Victor lay there, utterly stupefied by the fact that he had reincarnated into a high-tech, sci-fi world disguised as a normal society.
Before his head hit the mud, he hadn’t thought twice about people casually projecting holograms while humming.
It was just normal.
But analyzing it now with his cynical Earth-producer brain, it was mind-boggling.
When he left Earth, humanity hadn’t even managed to set up a decent apartment complex on the Moon.
Here?
They were practically running a multi-planetary music festival.
And unfortunately, or fortunately, for Victor, he was right in the middle of it.
Victor looked around the infirmary.
At first glance, the room looked exactly like any standard school clinic back on Earth, but his newly unlocked memories told a completely different story.
Take the device Nurse Brenda was currently holding, for instance.
It looked like a sleek tablet emitting gentle rays of light, but those rays were actually being powered by the nurse’s own acoustic ability.
The engineering behind it was incredibly complex, but its practical purpose was simple: it mapped out a high-resolution, three-dimensional view of his internal organs, functioning much like an ultrasound machine on Earth.
Except there was no messy gel, no clunky scanning wands, and the image quality was vastly superior.
It was a stunning realization—Nurse Brenda was effortlessly using her own bio-sound waves to check his brain, treating a piece of sci-fi magic as if it were just another Tuesday routine.’If doctors back on Earth saw this, they’d collectively lose their minds,’ Victor thought.
And it really was just a routine.
This device wasn’t high-end military tech; it was a basic, off-the-shelf instrument found in every school clinic.
The room was packed with “magical” gear masquerading as ordinary office equipment.
This eerie blend of mundane familiarity and mind-boggling technology perfectly summed up the entire world outside.
The social order here was surprisingly normal.
There were no warring kingdoms or grand fantasy factions—just the unified Federation.
People were born, went to school, graduated from university, and entered a corporate job market.
It felt identical to Earth, yet the entire foundation of their civilization rested on the universal Sound-to-Image ability.
Even the planet Victor had reincarnated onto shared this uncanny duality.
It was a provincial world named Veridian.
‘Well, at least it isn’t named Blue Star or Azure Planet,’ Victor thought, heaving an internal sigh of relief.
‘I don’t think I could handle waking up in a story that lazy.
But still, this place is deeply uncanny.’
The coincidences were genuinely bizarre.
Veridian’s continental layout was different from Earth’s, but the sky and oceans were the exact same shade of blue.
The forests were a familiar green, the dirt was brown, and a day still lasted twenty-four hours.
And these weren’t the only coincidences.
But the Sound-to-Image law warped everything beneath the surface.
Victor glanced toward his locker, remembering the smartphone sitting inside his jacket pocket.
Visually, it looked like a high-end, sleek version of an Earth phone, but its internal mechanics were entirely alien.
Victor didn’t know the exact engineering principles—he’d never been a tech geek in either life—but he knew the device operated on encoded sound packages.
By merely channeling his ability through his hand, the phone would read his unique Bio-Acoustic Signal and instantly unlock.
No Face-ID, no fingerprint scanners, no passcodes.
This rule applied to absolutely everything.
Every single piece of technology in this society was built to interface with human sound resonance.
Staring at the ceiling, Victor felt a profound sense of whiplash.
He was completely lost.
Rationally, he knew he shouldn’t be this shocked—he had lived the first seventeen years of his life taking these things for granted.
But now that he acquired his past-life memories, the sheer absurdity of this reality was hitting him like a second concussion.
Victor didn’t feel like a different person; his heart was still just as cold, and his humor was just as dark as it had been yesterday.
He hadn’t been replaced by a stranger.
But trying to balance 17 years of his own life with a sudden influx of thirty years of Earth’s music, traumas, and a humiliating death down a sewer pipe was a lot to process.
He shouldn’t be surprised by things he had looked at his entire life, yet looking at them through his newly expanded mind, he couldn’t help but feel completely shocked.
Right at that moment, just as he was deeply questioning his life choices, Nurse Brenda finished her check-up.
“Hmm, everything seems completely normal,” she said, pausing as she looked at him with visible curiosity.
“So… why exactly?…”
Hearing her trail off, Victor felt a fresh wave of embarrassment wash over him.
She was clearly trying to figure out why he had been acting like a complete lunatic just a moments ago.
“Like I said, Nurse Brenda, I was just rehearsing a play,” he muttered through gritted teeth.
He could swear this was officially the most humiliating situation he had ever been caught in.
‘Actually, it’s a tie,’ he corrected himself internally.
‘Getting caught by my cousin watching a magical girl anime last year is right up there.’
“Really?” Nurse Brenda asked, her eyes narrowing.
She clearly wasn’t buying it.
Victor was just about to crack under her intense scrutiny when, luckily for him, the infirmary door slammed open.
A frantic voice shouted across the room, “Vic! Where are you? Are you okay?!”
Both Victor and Nurse Brenda whipped their heads toward the male student who had just burst inside.
“Student Dylan! Please, this is an infirmary—no loud noises!” Nurse Brenda immediately admonished, her focus shifting away from Victor.
Seeing the spotlight leave him, Victor heaved a massive sigh of relief.
‘Thank god.
Dylan actually saved me from dying of embarrassment.
Hmm…
maybe I’ll reduce the severity of the beating I owe him for dragging me into that match in the first place.’
Dylan immediately shrank under the nurse’s glare, raising his hands in a frantic, apologetic gesture.
“Ah! Sorry, sorry, Nurse Brenda! My bad, I just got worried. I thought Vic’s brains were leaking out on the field.”
“His brain is perfectly fine, Student Moss, unlike your volume control,” Nurse Brenda sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose before turning back to Victor.
Sensing his window of opportunity, Victor sat up on the edge of the cot, sliding his feet into his shoes.
“So… I’m clear to go then?”
Nurse Brenda looked at him for a long moment, then gave a reluctant nod.
“Yes, you can leave.
But,” she held up a warning finger, cutting off his immediate relief, “absolutely no physical exercise or strenuous activity for the next couple of days.
No football, no running, nothing.
And if you feel dizzy, nauseous, or anything amiss at all, you come straight back here.
Got it?”
“Crystal clear. I excel at doing absolutely nothing, Nurse,” Victor said, his face a mask of pure, unbothered deadpan.
He stood up, testing his balance.
Aside from the dull roar of a thirty-year memory archive settling into his brain, everything seemed to be in working order.
“Good. Now get out of my infirmary, both of you,” she shooed them toward the door.
Dylan grabbed Victor by the shoulder, practically steering him out into the hallway.
“Man, you had us terrified. One second you’re trying to block a tackle, and the next you’re face-down unconscious, but you seemed to whisper some things about sewer pipes and uncredited audio mixing. The coach thought you were possessed by a very specific, corporate sewer demon.”
Victor rolled his shoulders, freeing himself from Dylan’s grip as they walked down the corridor.
“Hmm, just a bad dream, that’s all.”