"Damn it, damn it, damn it!" Kenji Tanaka slammed his hand against the steering wheel, the cheap plastic groaning in protest. He took a quick look at his phone - 9:17 AM. T
The shareholder meeting started at 9:30 AM sharp, and Mr. Takahashi did not tolerate tardiness, especially not from the project lead whose neck was already on the line.
Traffic was a nightmare, a sluggish beast indifferent to his desperation. He glanced at the GPS – still predicting an arrival time of 9:35 AM. Unacceptable.
Screw it.
Signalling was a luxury he couldn't afford. He wrenched the wheel, tires squealing as his battered sedan shot into the narrow lane, cutting off a sputtering scooter. A horn blared indignantly behind him. Kenji ignored it, pressing down harder on the accelerator. He just needed to shave off a few minutes. Maybe run that yellow light coming up... no, definitely run it.
He sped towards the intersection, eyes fixed on the traffic light, praying it stayed yellow just a second longer. It flickered to red just as he entered the intersection. He braced himself, expecting angry honking from the cross-traffic.
Instead, a monstrous shape filled his peripheral vision. A massive lorry, moving far too fast, its horn bellowing a deafening, final warning. There was no time to swerve, no time to brake, no time for anything but a fleeting, paralyzing terror.
Metal shrieked, glass shattered, and then...
Darkness took over.
Cold. Damp. The smell of turned earth and decay filled his nostrils. Suddenly, Kenji's awareness returned not as a gentle dawn, but as a harsh slap.
He tried to sit up, but his limbs felt like lead, unresponsive and bruised. Pain flared along his ribs, sharp and insistent. Panic clawed at his throat. Where was he? What happened? Fragments of someone else's memories, faint and disjointed, flickered at the edge of his consciousness – a sneering face framed by blonde curls, the sting of impact, darkness.
This isn't my body. The realization hit him with the force of a physical blow. He forced his eyes open. Above him, a starless, unfamiliar sky loomed, partially obscured by the gnarled branches of a dead tree. He was lying in churned soil, half-buried. A graveyard.
"No... no, no, no!" The voice that croaked out was thin, reedy, definitely not his own. He pushed himself up, ignoring the screaming protests from his abused muscles. He looked down at his hands – small, calloused, and dirty. His clothes were roughspun rags, torn and stained. This was the body of a boy, maybe fifteen or sixteen. And judging by the lingering pain and the location, a boy who hadn't died peacefully.
Suddenly, a blinding headache erupted behind his eyes, making him cry out and clutch his temples. It wasn't just pain; it was an invasion. Images, sounds, feelings – not his own – flooded his mind with brutal clarity.
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The sharp, arrogant voice. "Stand still, worm! How am I supposed to practice my Arcane Bolt accuracy if you keep flinching?"
The blonde girl, Lady Annelise, her pretty face twisted in cruel concentration. Pain lancing through his shoulder as a bolt hit, then another in the leg. He tried to protest, tried to say he was just an errand boy, not a practice dummy, but fear choked the words back.
Her laughter, light and chilling. "Father says disposable resources must be utilized. And you, errand boy, are eminently disposable."
"No.. please"
The boy had lost count of how many blows he took. The final blow, harder than the rest, struck his chest and sent him flying. The errad boy was almost dead, but still breathing,
"Throw him at the graveyard. I have finally learnt how to control my spells to hit targeted areas of the body." The Lady Annelise laughed.
"My father would surely be pleased"
It seemed that no one cared that he was breathing.
The rough hands of guards dragged him away under the cloak of dusk. The final sensation was of being tossed, unceremoniously, into the cold earth of the outer sect's graveyard...
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The headache receded as quickly as it came, leaving Kenji gasping, the phantom pains echoing in the boy's bruised body. The memories settled, raw and horrifying.
"So, that's it? Traded one shitty life for another?" Kenji—or whoever he was now—wanted to laugh, but it turned into a hacking cough, the action aggravating the very real injuries the boy had sustained. He now knew who the blonde girl was, felt the chilling contempt in her eyes, and understood the casual cruelty of being used as a living target dummy.
He wasn't just some random corpse; he was the discarded trash of a spoiled aristocrat. An errand boy in some magical school, killed without a second thought, utterly worthless in the eyes of this world.
Despair washed over him, cold and suffocating. Just his luck.
As he wallowed, something caught his eye. Faint motes of color drifted in the air, invisible a moment ago but now shimmering faintly in his vision – blues, greens, reds, coalescing and dispersing like dust motes in a sunbeam, yet possessing an inner light. They seemed thicker here, in this desolate corner of the graveyard.
Magic? The thought was alien, yet it resonated with a flicker of the body's original memories, now sharper after the influx. This world had magic. Could he use it?
He focused, trying to recall the simplest spell mentioned in the boy's fragmented thoughts – a basic Ignis Minor, a tiny flame meant for lighting candles. He held out a trembling finger, mimicking a remembered gesture, and tried to will fire into existence.
He felt... something. A faint tugging sensation, like pulling threads from the air. The colorful motes around his hand swirled slightly faster, converging towards his fingertip. A minuscule spark, barely visible, flickered for a second before dying. Feeble. Pathetic. But real.
He could sense magic. He could, however weakly, interact with it.
"Maybe I could learn more about controlling magic?" Kenji muttered, but quickly shook his head. The previous dead boy was an errand boy for a reason.
That meant that he was one of the discarded applicants with low aptitude, who were taken in as free labor, with the promise of a better life.
"Better life my ass."