It was raining again.
Not a dramatic thunderstorm or some cleansing, poetic downpour. Just the usual cold, steady drizzle that made everything feel like it was rotting a little faster. The kind of rain that made cheap suits smell worse and loose soles peel off secondhand shoes.
Sam Sato’s sneakers made a soft squelch as he crossed the street, the flickering glow of vending machines lighting the puddles around his feet. His coat—technically waterproof—had given up twenty minutes ago. The water had seeped in through the shoulders, into the collar, down his back.
He hadn’t brought an umbrella. He didn’t really plan to come home tonight dry anyway.
It was 11:42 p.m. The same route. The same damn vending machine with the busted “milk tea” button. The same blinking ad for fat-loss pills that promised “a new you in just seven days.”
Sam let out a breath. Not quite a sigh. Just… air leaving a body that hadn’t had much to say in years.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. Reflexively, he pulled it out. The screen lit up, casting a pale blue light across his tired face.
0 messages.
0 missed calls.
Battery: 11%.
Figures.
He stared at the screen for another second, then turned it off and slipped it back into his coat. Just noise. That’s all the phone ever was. Background noise to pretend someone, somewhere, might still care.
He turned the corner onto the last stretch before home. Three-story walk-up. Cracked windows. Smelled like mildew and burnt rice. His apartment had a door that didn’t quite close right unless you kicked it. One pillow. One lightbulb. One man wasting away.
But he’d made peace with that. Mostly.
The crosswalk ahead flicked from green to red. He stopped without thinking, the way you do when your body follows patterns your mind stopped caring about.
Across the street, traffic moved in lazy bursts—taxis, delivery bikes, someone blasting pop music from their car window despite the rain. The scent of gasoline mixed with the wet pavement made the whole world feel like an old movie reel. Something just slightly out of sync.
He waited.
And that’s when he saw her.
Small. Soaked. Standing way too close to the curb. A kid—maybe eight? Nine? Her school bag was dragging behind her like she’d run too far, and her shoes were untied. She wasn’t moving. Just staring wide-eyed at something.
No, not something—headlights.
Sam’s eyes snapped toward the incoming car. It wasn’t slowing down.
Shit.
He moved.
It wasn’t dramatic or heroic. It wasn’t even fast. Just a tired man’s instinct—some leftover reflex from a life that had mostly been sitting still.
He stepped off the curb. Slipped once. Caught his footing. Then sprinted.
Two seconds. One.
His arms wrapped around the girl just as the car slammed into them.
There wasn’t time for pain.
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Just a brief moment where he felt weightless.
And then nothing.
Silence.
No heartbeat. No breath. No body.
But still… something.
A presence. A sliver of thought floating in darkness, aware of itself but not of where—or what—it was anymore.
This was it, right? The afterlife? The void? Eternal peace?
Sam wasn’t sure if he believed in any of it. Heaven. Hell. Reincarnation. Honestly, he expected death to feel like sleep—just blank, black, done.
Instead, something stirred.
It wasn’t light, exactly. More like... code.
Lines of glowing text blinked across the darkness, sharp and sterile like a medical chart or some weird game interface.
[ECHO CODEX BOOTING...]
[INITIALIZING TIMELINE SYNC]
[ERROR: SOUL THREAD UNSTABLE]
[RECOVERY MODE ENGAGED]
His thoughts screamed What the hell is this?!
But his mouth didn’t exist. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t panic. Just… exist, barely, while the system kept printing lines like a dream he couldn’t wake up from.
[NEW HOST VESSEL SELECTED: SAMUEL RAVEISH]
[REBOOT IN 3... 2... 1...]
Reboot?
What the hell was rebooting?
Suddenly—
Noise.
Light.
Cold.
He was falling, but also rising, like every atom in his body was being stitched back together too fast and too wrong. Voices buzzed around him—gentle, high-pitched, unintelligible.
Something wet on his face. Skin contact. Fabric. Movement.
He cried.
It wasn’t a decision. It wasn’t even a reaction. It was a primal, helpless wail that shattered the stillness.
And as he screamed, a language he didn’t understand whispered into his ears, soft and rhythmic. Someone was holding him. Cradling him. Calling him…
Not Sam.
Samuel.
His name wasn’t Sam Sato anymore.
He was… someone new.
[WELCOME, SAMUEL RAVEISH]
[YOU HAVE BEEN GIVEN A SECOND CHANCE]
And just like that, the system went quiet.
The crying wouldn't stop.
Not his. Theirs.
The woman held him close—closer than anyone had in years, maybe longer. Her hands trembled as they cradled his tiny frame, her breaths stuttering like she couldn’t believe he was real. Each sob that left her throat carried something heavy: disbelief, relief, love that had nearly turned to grief.
“He’s breathing...” she whispered, her voice cracking in a strange language that felt familiar and foreign all at once. "Thank the stars, he's breathing..."
Samuel didn’t understand the words, but the tone? The tone he knew. It was the same voice someone might use after surviving a nightmare—like they’d almost lost something they couldn’t survive without.
Tears hit his forehead—warm, frantic drops that soaked into his newborn skin.
She was young, maybe mid-twenties. Raven-black hair stuck to her cheeks from sweat and tears. Her eyes were violet, sharp and glassy, and she looked at him like he was the only thing keeping her heart beating.
Her husband—Samuel assumed the man beside her was the father—hovered a step behind, silent but shaking. His eyes stayed locked on Samuel, wide and red-rimmed. He didn’t speak. He didn’t blink. His hands were clenched so tightly that the knuckles had turned white.
But when Samuel let out a small, raspy cry, the man dropped to his knees like the sound physically crushed him.
He pressed his forehead against the side of the bed and let out a noise—half-laugh, half-sob.
“He made it… He’s here…”
His voice cracked on every word.
Samuel didn’t know what kind of world this was. He didn’t know these people, didn’t know their language, didn’t know why the hell he was a baby or why a system had rebooted his soul like it was loading a save file.
But he knew what this was.
This was love.
This was raw, panicked, desperate love from two people who had probably prayed for a miracle—who had prepared to say goodbye—and then got him instead.
And it broke something in him.
Not in a bad way. Not even in a dramatic way.
Just quietly.
In his past life, no one had cried when he died. No one had knelt beside his body or wept into his chest. His final act had gone unnoticed by the world.
But here… he mattered. Already. To people who didn’t even know him yet.
He felt the mother’s arms tighten, like she could sense his crying wasn’t just instinct but something deeper. Her lips pressed gently to his forehead. She whispered his name.
“Samuel.”
Not Sam. Not Sato.
Samuel Raveish.
He wasn’t sure how he felt about it yet.
The father moved beside her, placing one hand carefully on Samuel’s head, as if afraid to break him. He looked overwhelmed, undone, and somehow more alive than anyone Sam had seen in years.
“Look at him,” the man whispered. “He’s small but loud.”
The mother laughed—a soft, exhausted sound—and nestled Samuel closer to her chest. “Loud is good.”
For a moment, no one spoke. The room settled into that fragile, golden silence that only comes after something awful almost happens but doesn’t. The kind of silence that dares you to breathe again.
Samuel’s heartbeat slowed. The air felt warm. Heavy, but safe.
He didn’t know these people. He didn’t know what this world would ask of him, or what it meant to be “Samuel Raveish.”
But for the first time in years, he felt like maybe… just maybe… this second chance could mean something.
Even if he didn’t deserve it.
