Victor and Dylan walked through the quiet hallways of Oak Grove High School, the quiet hum of their footsteps echoing against the lockers as they chatted.
“Nurse Brenda is terrifying,” Dylan muttered, throwing a cautious glance back toward the clinic.
“She’s only terrifying if you do something stupid,” Victor retorted with a lazy roll of his eyes.
“Hehe, my bad.” Dylan rubbed the back of his neck with a sheepish chuckle.
“But seriously, are you actually okay, dude? It was pretty scary watching you get completely leveled out there.”
“I’m fine. Nurse Brenda already cleared me; no concussion, no major injuries. It was just the sheer force of the impact that knocked me out.” Victor paused, his eyes narrowing into a sharp glare.
“Speaking of which, this only happened because you dragged me onto that football field in the first place.” He raised a pale, tightly clenched fist.
Seeing the threat, Dylan immediately went pale and held up his hands in mock terror.
“Brother, no! Big brother, it wasn’t my fault! Forgive your poor little brother, please!”
“Humph. You’re incredibly lucky I’m not in the mood to deal with the physical exertion of beating you,” Victor snorted, lowering his hand and continuing down the corridor.
He wasn’t exaggerating.
He was still actively processing the thirty-year emotional hard drive currently unpacking inside his mind; he genuinely lacked the cognitive budget for violence.
Dylan blinked, a little stunned by the easy pass.
The two of them had been inseparable since middle school, navigating their final year of high school together as seventeen-turning-eighteen-year-olds.
Physically and socially, they were complete opposites.
Dylan was a towering 1.88 meters tall, boasting broad, defined shoulders from sports, striking hazel eyes, and an outgoing, bright personality that naturally drew people in.
Victor, on the other hand, stood at 1.84 meters with pitch-black hair and ink-dark eyes.
He had a slender frame and carried a permanent set of dark shadows beneath his eyes, giving him the distinct look of a deeply introverted, melancholic teenager.
It was a perfectly fitting aesthetic for a guy who despised loud noises, possessed a fiercely snappy and sarcastic tongue, and looked like a walking manifestation of a rainy Tuesday morning.
They were complete opposites, yet they were best friends.
Dylan was one of the few people who didn’t take Victor’s biting, cynical comments about life personally.
In fact, Dylan often looked up to him like an older brother, finding an odd, grounded wisdom in Victor’s dreary outlook.
Their dynamic was a well-oiled machine: Victor would ruthlessly scold Dylan whenever the athlete did something reckless, and Dylan would aggressively drag Victor out of his shell and into all kinds of social chaos.
That was exactly why Dylan was so surprised right now.
Under normal circumstances, Victor would have at least kicked him in the butt a couple of times.
“Are you absolutely sure you’re okay?” Dylan pressed, his golden-retriever energy momentarily fading into genuine worry.
“Yeah. I’m sure. I just have a headache,” Victor muttered, massaging his temples.
“Well, then how about we head over to the auditorium?” Dylan suggested, his excitement instantly bouncing back.
“I heard a bunch of the elites are rehearsing for the City’s Inter-School Musical Competition today! The visual manifestations are supposed to be insane!”
Victor froze mid-step, a sharp pang of anxiety striking his chest at the mention of the word Musical.
“No,” he replied, his voice dropping a fraction.
“I have a headache. I’m going straight home to rest.”
Recognizing the finality in his friend’s tone, Dylan didn’t push.
The two of them soon bade each other farewell at the main entrance.
Victor walked silently toward his locker, his mind entirely occupied as he grabbed his jacket and backpack.
The physical education class where he had taken his catastrophic tumble happened to be the last period of the afternoon, meaning he was finally free to escape.
He heaved a quiet, exhausting sigh of relief as he walked out the front doors.
In his current mental state, he had absolutely zero willpower left to face another classroom.
Victor walked through the familiar streets of Camrona City, heading toward the small, off-campus apartment he rented nearby.
Along the way, he found himself observing his surroundings as if he were seeing them for the very first time.
The cars cruising down the asphalt, the architecture of the houses and buildings, the crowds bustling on the sidewalks—at a glance, it looked just like Earth.
Yet, the subtle differences were overwhelming.
Practically every single pedestrian wore headphones, lost in their own private musical worlds.
The sleek cars glided past in total, eerie silence, though it was obvious the passengers inside were listening to music.
Even through the open windows of residential homes, the faint, layered echoes of melodies, spoken word, and sonic art drifted out into the afternoon air.
This was a civilization that lived, breathed, and operated entirely on sound and music.
Because every human possessed a natural capability tied to sound energy, it was as if an entire species had been biologically hardwired to be music enthusiasts.
A wry, bitter smile tugged at the corner of Victor’s lips.
“Everything makes sense now,” he whispered softly to the empty air.
Unlike the music-obsessed society around him, Victor had spent his entire childhood in this world actively trying not to get involved with music.
At the same time, he had always felt a deep, magnetic attraction to it.
For seventeen years, he had rationalized this paradox, telling himself he was just an anti-social misfit who preferred quiet, and that his underlying craving for melodies was simply a universal human instinct he was successfully suppressing.
He still remembered when he was 5 years old, when he suddenly burst into tears when he listened to a song while he was out with his aunt.
But with his past-life memories fully unlocked, he finally knew the devastating truth.
Victor was not the type to get emotional, let alone cry.
But as the sheer weight of his past on Earth crystallized inside his mind, he couldn’t stop a sudden wave of hot tears from blurring his vision.
He was incredibly lucky that he had just reached the threshold of his apartment; he slipped inside, locking the door behind him as the tears finally spilled over, completely unobserved.
Sitting in the dim quiet of his messy room, his mind forced him to relive his entire previous existence.
Losing his parents at a young age had left him completely isolated, with no safety net and no family to turn to.
Music hadn’t been a hobby or a mere career choice; it was his actual survival mechanism—the only thing anchoring him to a world that had otherwise abandoned him.
He had a passion for music that consumed his being.
Defying every financial and social expectation, he had clawed his way into a prestigious music school.
For a brief moment, the universe had relented.
Those college years were the absolute best of his life—he was surrounded by art, deeply passionate, and fell hopelessly in love.
Then came his first major betrayal.
His girlfriend had brutally broken his heart, leaving him with a permanent distrust of intimacy, though his fierce love for music remained untouched.
After graduation, he had entered the real world eager to create masterpieces.
Instead, he entered a ten-year nightmare of catastrophic bad luck.
He became a hyper-competent “jack-of-all-trades” out of sheer necessity, working as an uncredited mixer, a substitute conductor, and a ghost producer.
He consistently ran into the most toxic, parasitic corporate elites the industry had to offer, carrying entire projects on his back while others took the paychecks and the glory.
The absolute breaking point came when a famous, globally adored pop idol shamelessly plagiarized a deeply personal score Victor had written.
When he tried to speak up and fight for his rights, the corporate machine shielded the star.
Worse, the idol’s toxic, rabid fanbase completely upended his life.
They doxxed him, stalked his messy apartment, bombarded him with graphic death threats, and branded him a clout-chasing liar.
By the time Victor took that fateful, numb walk in the pouring rain, his spirit was already entirely broken.
He didn’t just have depression; he had severe psychological exhaustion from a world that took his pure passion and used it to bleed him dry.
He had given up on his only love, music, and consequently, he had given up on life.
Although a missing manhole cover was what physically killed him, his spirit had been dead long before he hit the bottom of that pipe.
“How ironic, huh?” Victor muttered to the empty apartment, a sad, self-deprecating laugh escaping his chest.
“The exact second I completely give up on music, the universe reincarnates me into the one place where I can’t escape its claws.”
He finally understood his own childhood behavior.
Even though his memories had been locked away until today, they had been influencing him from the shadows all along.
His subconscious had been actively protecting him from the very art that had destroyed him.
It was a bizarre, undeniable proof of reincarnation: his past-life traumas had always been right there with him, quietly molding his new life.
He had reincarnated into a body that was biologically and spiritually wired for music.
While his deep-seated traumas had forced him to unconsciously avoid the art form that ruined him, his very flesh craved it.
No matter how much he tried to deny it, the raw, unyielding passion for music from his past life hadn’t vanished.
It was still burning quietly beneath the ice, waiting for a single spark.