Chapter 5 :A Soul Too Loud for Silence

Three months had passed. Or at least, I think it had been three. Time didn’t feel real in this body. Not when I could barely move, barely speak. Not when my days were stitched together by naps, milk, and the rhythmic hum of a lullaby I couldn’t understand.

They called me Adrian. I heard it often—usually wrapped in warmth, in the soft voice of the woman who held me. I didn’t know the language, not yet, but some words began to repeat enough that I could guess at them. “Mama.” “Sleep.” “Eat.” “Good boy.” Maybe a dozen. Maybe more. The words blurred together like smudged ink.

This new life had a rhythm. I would wake up to the sound of birdsong or the soft creak of wood beneath footsteps. Then came feeding.

The first day, I resisted—humiliated by the act, by the reality of what I’d become. I was an infant again. A high school student reduced to this. But hunger always won, and breastfeeding was my only source of nourishment. The shame burned, but my body didn’t care.

After a week or two, I stopped flinching.

And beyond that… I didn’t do much else.

There were no conversations. No choices. No distractions. Just the same daily pattern—wake, feed, sleep, repeat. I was trapped in a soft, quiet world, surrounded by voices I couldn’t understand and faces I didn’t know. The only thing that truly belonged to me was my mind.

And that was the real prison.

The worst part wasn’t the helplessness.

It was the noise—this constant, unbearable storm inside my head. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. But my mind? It wouldn’t stop. The silence outside only made it worse. My thoughts bounced around like echoes in a sealed tomb, growing louder and sharper with every passing day. I saw their faces every time I blinked—Daiki’s grin, Kaito’s sarcasm, Natsumi’s eyes full of fire , my father’s tired but smiling face —but their voices were slipping away. Like radio signals fading into static. I’d try to remember a laugh, a goodbye, a single word—and it would come distorted, muffled, almost alien. I was forgetting them. Not just their voices. Everything. The warmth of our memories, the way they made me feel, the parts of me that had been shaped by them. Gone. Like sand sliding through open fingers, and I couldn’t hold on no matter how hard I tried.

I started to panic. Not outwardly—I didn’t even have the strength to flail. But inside, I was tearing myself apart. I felt it happening, this quiet disintegration of who I used to be. My thoughts didn’t feel like mine anymore. Some days, I couldn’t remember how old I had been when I died. Some days, I couldn’t even remember my mother’s face—not my new one, the real one. I don’t know if it was the trauma, the way I died, or the fact that this baby body wasn’t built to carry a soul that had seen hell—but something inside me was rotting. My personality, my memories, my voice—it was all breaking down, crumbling slowly into something hollow. It was torture. Not the kind that screams. The kind that erodes. Quiet. Relentless. And I couldn’t stop it.

I was losing myself. I was losing my sanity.

That thought alone kept me up through endless stretches of dim-lit afternoons and silent, moonlit nights.

And yet—life around me kept moving.

The people in this house moved with kindness. My mother—my new mother—was radiant. Golden-brown hair. Warm eyes. A smile so gentle it could’ve cracked my walls if I hadn’t already gone numb. She held me like I mattered. Like I wasn’t broken. Like I wasn’t a soul stuffed into the body of something unfinished.

The man who must’ve been my father was quiet but steady. Always there. Present. Anchored in a way that reminded me too much of the man I’d lost. Even the maid—always moving softly, hands gentle, eyes patient—seemed to exist with a quiet sort of love.

But their kindness didn’t soothe me.

It hurt.

Every time I saw their smiles, every time I felt their warmth, something inside me twisted—a sharp, bitter ache that grew deeper with each passing day. Not because they were unkind—but because they were kind.

They were good.
They were loving.
And they reminded me, relentlessly, of the family I would never have again.

I watched them quietly. I didn’t cry. Didn’t laugh. Didn’t smile. Didn’t show any reaction.

I should have been grateful. I should have felt lucky to be alive, even in this fragile new form. But every smile, every gentle touch, didn’t bring comfort. Instead, it felt like forgiveness I hadn’t earned—an unconditional love I didn’t deserve.

And strangely, even though I could feel their immense love for me, I didn’t feel anything in return. That emptiness hurt far more than I expected. I didn’t hate these new parents, but I didn’t love them either. Yet, ignoring them only deepened the ache inside me.

All that pain fused together, growing heavier with each passing day, slowly eating away at my mind. As the three-month mark since my rebirth approached, I felt like I couldn’t endure another moment. This torment was too much—I was too broken to keep resisting.

And then—just when I thought I couldn’t fall any further—something shifted.

It happened on an ordinary afternoon.

I was lying in the cradle, too weak to move, too numb to cry. The sun hung low in the sky, painting the wooden walls with slanted gold. My tiny fingers curled against the edge of a blanket I didn’t remember being wrapped in. Sleep was tugging at me, dull and heavy.

And then, I felt it.

The pull.

Not physical—spiritual. A jolt, sharp and wrong, like someone had grabbed the thread of my soul and yanked.

My vision twisted. The warmth of the room peeled away. The sounds faded.

The world slipped—

And then, white.

That place again.

Endless. Empty. Cold in a way that didn’t touch skin, but soul.

For the first time in months, I finally showed an emotion—not panic, but a dulled version of it.

Why am I here again?

And just like last time, The divine figure appeared.

Not walked in — appeared. One moment the space was nothing but silence and blankness, the next, he was there. As if distance meant nothing to him.

His form was human, but only at a glance. Too perfect. Too smooth. His pale white skin looked like porcelain—flawless and cold. His silver hair drifted weightlessly behind him, as if underwater, untouched by gravity’s pull. And his golden eyes—bright, unblinking—glowed with something that wasn’t warmth. Curiosity, maybe. Or amusement.

That same smirk was plastered across his face. Not mocking exactly, but distant. Detached. Like he was watching a slow-moving play unfold.

“Ah, you’re finally back,” he said casually, as if I were an old friend returning from a long absence.

Something inside me snapped.

I didn’t know what it was exactly. Maybe it was the smirk. Maybe the condescending tone. Or maybe it was everything I’d swallowed over the past three months finally clawing its way up from deep inside.

I glared at him. And then I screamed—fueled by pure, burning rage and hatred.

“YOU THINK THIS IS FUNNY?!”

The god blinked. For once, caught off guard. Maybe even surprised.

“You drop me into a world I didn’t ask for, rip me away from the people I love—” My voice cracked, but I pushed through it, the words catching in my throat, “—and now you’re cracking jokes like we’re old friends? Go to hell!”

The figure’s expression shifted—just slightly. The smirk faltered, not in guilt or shame, but in something harder to place. Like he was watching a spark trying to become a fire, unsure whether to let it burn or smother it.

“Do you know what it’s like to remember everything but not be able to do anything?! To sit there like a doll, listening to strangers speak gibberish while my real life rots in the back of my mind?!”

I sucked in a breath, but it only fed the fire.

“I didn’t ask for this! I didn’t ask to be born again! I didn’t want some goddamn second chance. I wanted my life! I wanted to graduate with my friends, maybe confess my feelings, maybe fix things with my dad—and you took that from me!”

The smirk vanished entirely. His face grew still, unreadable. Like a curtain had dropped behind his eyes.

“Got that out of your system?” he asked, voice low, steady.

“NO!”

Tears burned in my eyes. Rage mixed with grief, twisting my gut.

"You show up now like some all-knowing asshole, acting like you’re doing me a favor. But you don’t care. You just… watch. Like it’s entertainment."

The being’s smile didn’t return this time. His gaze sharpened. That faint shimmer of divine calm started to crack.

He stepped closer—if you could call it stepping in this weightless space. His golden eyes bored into mine, and for the first time, I saw something behind them.

Not pity.
Not amusement.

Irritation.

“You’re angry. I get it,” he said, voice low. “But don’t act like I ripped your life away.”

I blinked.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You’re not some innocent victim plucked from paradise,” he snapped. “You died, Haruki And not in some heroic blaze of glory. You didn’t fall in battle. You weren’t murdered in cold blood.”

His voice deepened, every word heavier than the last.

“You killed yourself.”

The words hit harder than any punch. My breath caught in my throat.

“No—!” I started, but he raised a hand.

“You charged forward. Alone. Against a man with a gun. After already being wounded. After everyone told you to run. And don’t pretend you didn’t know what would happen.”

I stared at him, speechless. The white space felt smaller somehow.

“You wanted to die,” he said, almost whispering. “Or at least… part of you didn’t care if you did.”

Tears welled up in my eyes again. Not from rage this time.

Guilt.

“That’s not true,” I muttered.

“Isn’t it?” he said, eyes locked on mine. “You were already unraveling long before you stepped into that gym. You walked through life like a ghost—isolated, hollow, waiting for something to make it all worth it. And when the moment came... you chose to make your end the one thing that mattered.”

He leand forward —not threatening, but solid. Certain. Like gravity itself was leaning in.

“I’m not here to judge you. I’m not here to fix you either. I’m only a guide. A witness between one life and the next.”

Then, softer—quieter, but cutting deep:

“But even from here I could see that the only person to blame for your death was you..”

That landed like a punch. Not cruel. Not wrong. Just... true

I shook my head slowly, lips trembling. “I just… I just didn’t want anyone else to die.”

“And no one is saying that was wrong,” he said. “But you have to own it. You weren’t just a victim. You made a choice.”

I crumpled. Emotion surged through me in waves—grief, shame, confusion. The truth of it dug its nails in and wouldn’t let go.

“But I didn’t think it would feel like this,” I whispered.

He nodded slowly.

“No one ever does.”

The silence between us stretched—tense, heavy, filled with everything neither of us said. I tried to hold my thoughts together, to stop them from slipping through the cracks.

Then, finally, the figure exhaled. It wasn’t dramatic—just quiet. Tired, maybe. Worn down.

“I didn’t come here to argue,” he said, his tone softer now. “I’m not here to punish you. I’m not even supposed to interfere like this.”

I looked up at him, confused.

“Then why did you?” I asked. “Why say all that? Why drag me here again?”

“Because you're wasting it,” he said simply. “This new life you were given. You’re letting it rot. And I get it, truly—I do. You’re grieving. You’re angry. But if you don’t do something, anything, then your pain will be the only thing that survives in you.”

He lifted his hand.

Golden symbols began to drift through the air between us—soft, radiant, elegant. They pulsed gently like a heartbeat, glowing brighter with each passing second.

“I came to offer something,” he said. “A divine blessing. A small one. But it might help.”

The runes twisted gently through the space around me, orbiting like fireflies.

“It’s called the Divine Blessing of Language,” he said. “It will allow you to understand and speak the language of the world you’ve been born into.”

The glowing runes began to spin slowly in the air, their light humming in time with something inside me.

“You won’t be trapped in silence anymore. You’ll be able to hear them—really hear them. And speak back, when your body grows strong enough.”

I looked up at him warily. “That’s it?”

“That’s it,” he said.

The golden light slowly descended, and I felt it seep into me—not like heat, not like electricity. More like recognition. Like a missing puzzle piece clicking into place in my mind.

I looked up again, breathing a little steadier. “Why help me at all?”

“Because you’re still screaming,” he said. “You haven’t given up. Even in that tiny, broken body of yours, you’re still fighting to feel something. That kind of soul deserves a chance to speak.”

The divine symbols vanished one by one, fading into my chest until the void grew quiet again.

I want to feel. I want to live. But what if that means I’ll forget? I asked myself.

“You won’t forget them,” he said after a pause.

I looked at him, confused. Could he read my thoughts?

“I know that’s the one thing on your mind right now. Will I forget my friends? My father? Will I forget who I was? Was my life meaningless? I can assure you—you won’t forget. Yes, you might lose bits and pieces of your old life, but that’s normal. That’s what happens as time passes—memories fade. But your determination showed me you’ll remember, at least the important parts.”

He paused again and met my eyes.

“But don’t get the wrong idea. You still have to stop trying to live in a life that’s already over. You have to move on. Live your new life. Experience things you couldn’t before. Or even do what you used to do. It’s not just about existing—find happiness. Find a reason to keep moving forward.”

I looked down. My fists clenched. I didn’t know if I could do that.

But I wanted to try.

The void began to shatter.

He watched me, a final glimmer flickering in his golden eyes.

“Live, Haruki,” he said. “Live as someone who didn’t disappear.”

The void cracked.

The light broke.

And I fell.

Back into the cradles that had been my prison for months.

But something was different.
I was no longer just a broken prisoner with no way out.
The grief was still there—it probably always would be—but something else had taken root.

A spark of hope.

A crack had formed in the walls I’d built around myself. Small. Fragile. But real.

And for the first time since I opened my eyes in this new world…
I thought that maybe, just maybe—
I could learn how to live again.