Arc 1: A Day in the Capital.

Chapter 1: I am Natsuki Subaru.

TW: multiple attempts of suicide, graphic depictions of injuries and death, detailed insights of depressing or self-destructive thoughts, etc. Please proceed with care.

Breathe in, breathe out.

(Nevermind.)

Tossing the knife into the sink, he turns on the tap and lets the icy water run through the burning on his wrist. It stings and that's fine.

He swallows, grimaces, and throws up again.

Breathe in, breathe out.

(Alright, that's enough.)

He smears away the stomach acid on his face with a blood-stained hand.

He screws the tap shut, leaves the bathroom.

Curling up on his bed, he doesn't bother to cover himself in the sheets. The air conditioning isn't on, and the fan's switch is too far away.

It's stifling in here.

He rolls over on his bed and wills himself to go to sleep.

("Do you have a dream?" the voice asks.)

(He looks the figure in the eyes and simply says, "I want to die.")

Knife on wrist.

And he doesn't hesitate this time.

The world lights up.

That's strange.

The room shouldn't light up. His curtains are black, he hasn't touched the light switch in years, and there shouldn't be this many colours in his living space.

It's gray. It has to be gray.

(It isn't.)

There are people. Chattering, Talking, making noise. This isn't his room. The space is too large, too big, too full of life--

"Hey, sonny!"

He turns around.

The man had hair such a shade of green for his age. Before him, laid out atop a very vintage-looking food cart, was an assortment of bright red apples.

Behind him, yellow bricks on the wall.

(Where am I?)

"You look like you could use an appa. How about it?"

(And where have I heard that line before?)

He doesn't move yet. He doesn't know what to do-- the polite thing is to go over there and buy one, or smile and wave in refusal-- he hasn't interacted with a soul in ages, but he knows that much, of course.

But right now, he just feels like throwing up again.

Where is he? Why is it so crowded, so noisy? Why is he outside, when the sun is so bright and why is the world so colourful?

He looks to the side and sees a dragon-drawn carriage. A fountain in the middle of the city. Cobblestone roadwork. Triangular flags hung over the cityscape, and imperial banners hung over shop windows.

A person with a lizard-like head is walking across from him, talking to a lady with wolf ears an unnatural shade of dark gray.

(You're kidding me.)

He's seen enough anime to know where this is going.

He finds a quiet alley and sits down, curling his knees in with a deep breath in and out.

He grabs a fistful of his hair and-- no.

The length is wrong. And it's smoother, too. His fingers are chapped but tender, his hair isn't as dirty and oily as he remembers.

In fact, the slight solidity of his bangs-- they're gelled.

(Who the fuck gells their hair like this.)

He's not wearing his sweater. He's wearing a tracksuit, white, with black and lined with yellow.

A familiar set of clothing, but he can't quite place it.

He checks his wrist, and sure enough, the left is empty. Clean, unblemished-- they're gone? They're gone.

(Why are they gone?)

He stops himself before his nails prick out a new hole in the flesh.

He checks his right wrist-- and he breathes out a sigh of relief when he sees it's not as pretty as the other side.

He trails a finger across the lumpy scar at the base of his right thumb, and inspects the rests with more scrutiny this time.

(They're not mine, he realizes.)

(These marks aren't the marks I made.)

The one here, at the base of his thumb-- that's his. But the rest are foreign to him.

He can tell, after all. He knew where he made his own marks, and these weren't it. Which meant that this body wasn't his body.

He searches his pockets.

There's a cellphone-- a flip phone? In 2016?? in his right pocket. In his left pocket… a switchblade, and a white bottle of pills without a label on it.

(Drugs? No, antidepressants, probably. They're the same ones I have at home.)

And then, a wallet.

Some paper receipts, a guitar pick, and spare house key? This guy is a total security risk, don't keep all this bullcrap in your wallet!

There's a gaming center membership card; a, according to the receipt, empty credit card; and… a paltry amount of cash. It's yen, so he at least knows this body is Japanese.

(Ah, a notched ten yen coin. Lucky.)

And there it is.

The ID card, gotta have one of that if you're carrying your wallet around with you…

It's flipped over, and doesn't quite fit into the pocket it's been stuffed into, so he tries vainly to dig it out, carefully--

--then he sighs and gives up. He doesn't want to break it.

The clock showed that it was two in the afternoon.

There are no numbers in the contact list except for the mobile agency's customer contact. No messages, no emails, no social media.

No pictures, either.

So he turns it off and looks into the black screen, using that as a makeshift mirror.

And immediately, he drops the phone.

It's okay, it's okay, he caught it before it fell, it's fine. Flip phones can probably survive a tumble or two anyways.

But he picks up the courage to look at himself again and he immediately grimaces because-- shit.

He's looking at Natsuki Subaru, world's most unfortunate main character ever.

And this body-- though a little more moody-looking than the obnoxious main character people love and hate-- is now his.

He's been reincarnated, and in all of the fucking possibilities…

...he's Natsuki Subaru, the man who's cursed with the blessing to die more than once.

(Dear god, when I said 'I want to die', I definitely did not mean this.)

(Or is this your way of making a sick, ironic fucking joke?)

Okay, calm down.

He might be reincarnated into an anime, but that didn't mean he was obliged to follow the story. Honestly, he could care less about who died as long as he didn't make contact with them.

He just wants to die.

That's right, maybe he can try dying again, before all of it happens. He's already done it once, the second time shouldn't be as bad.

(But I don't know enough about this world yet, he realizes. Where can I run without identification? How do I earn money? I can't even die to run away.)

He knows this show.

But he didn't finish it. It was tiring to watch and he didn't think this would happen, obviously. He maybe knows the first arc and a bit of the second, but the third is a blur, he just knows there's a White Whale or something, but nothing else.

(Fuck, it hurts to remember.)

He tugs at his hair and grumbles soundlessly.

(It's so annoying it's so annoying it's so annoying it's so annoying)

"Hey, kid, uh, you alright there buddy?"

He looks up, and he sees that nonsense. Three stereotypical-looking thugs, we've seen them plenty of times, except…

(...They look concerned?)

"You're bleeding, dude," the shorter one says, pointing-- and when he looks over, it's true. He was scratching again, bleeding crescents littering the back of his palm.

He hides it and looks away. Maybe he'll go somewhere else…

"Ah man, don't bother with him, Kan," the taller, lanky, white-haired one says. "He's like Dara, you know? They don't want our help."

"Yeah, you said that last time too and what happened to Dara?" Kan says, turning with a huff, "us slum kids have to stay together, y'know?"

"He's obviously not a slum kid, though," the tallest, bulkiest one says.

(Ugh, they're talking like I'm not here.)

He stands up, gathering his things and stuffing them into his pockets. Isn't Subaru supposed to have some groceries? Oh, whatever.

It doesn't seem like they want to mug him, so it probably doesn't matter.

"Hey, wait, you--!!"

He ignores them.

Maybe he can get some money if he sells the knife or the phone? Ah, but he kinda wants the knife. It looks really cool and everything.

A hand grabs his shoulder, and he freezes.

He's pulled to face the three thugs. The lanky one's the one that grabbed him, and he looks annoyed.

"Hey, listen to us, won't you?" he says, trying to be patient. "You from around here? No? Well uh, just don't do that anymore."

He stares at them, unimpressed.

"I'm being serious here!" the smallest one raises his voice, "can't you treasure your life a little? Or something."

He raises an eyebrow. Is it because this was a different world? These people were strangely… stubborn.

(And a total pain in the ass, leave me alone.)

He shoves the hand off with a little more strength than necessary. Turning back around, he begins to march off--

--only to bump right into a girl at the corner.

"Oh, my bad!" the girl says.

She'd only stumbled backwards, but he skidded in surprise, tripping across a cardboard box at the side and falling on his bottom.

It's Felt.

"Well, you seem fine. I gotta run, so see ya!" she gives a curt wave before scampering right off again.

He has to get away.

He knows what happens next. He doesn't want to be here when it happens and-- ah, his head hurts. His fists clenches tightly in his hair and he stands up with a deep, shoulder-sagging sigh.

"Wow, that was fucking weird," the lanky thug says. "Hey, you!"

(What this time?)

They flinch. Guess Subaru's nasty eye structure comes with its perks.

"What's with that look? We're just trying to help for once!" the lanky one snaps. Of course, nothing good comes out of trying to one-up thugs like them.

"There's a limit to how rude you can be!" the little one's lost his patience too.

He sighs.

Then he starts running, because well, what else can you do?

One thing he's realized for now is that he can't read any of the signs, and for some reason, he's been running for five minutes straight and he isn't tired yet.

Maybe a little exerted, a little hard of breath, but nothing serious.

...Which is strange for a guy like him, that hasn't done more than climb his household stairs for the past three years.

(Oh, right. This is Subaru's body. He was a pretty fit guy, wasn't he?)

Now that the surprise has come and gone-- he looks over the bridge into the water, and stares at his own reflection.

He's Natsuki Subaru-- or at least, this body is.

This is so fucking stupid, he could care less about Emilia or whatever, or the stupid badge, or the royal selection, or the demon twins, or…

(That's right. Let's go die.)

(This is probably just some temporary glitch. Maybe if I die, the real Subaru will come back, problem solved.)

And he hefts himself over the bridge, sitting on the ledge.

It's not very high, but it was pretty deep and the currents are fast. It shouldn't be too hard to die like this.

(I should do this before I get cold feet.)

(He doesn't need to take off his shoes, right? It's another world, after all.)

And he lets himself fall forward.

He feels the telltale droop of his stomach, he hears the crowd cry out in surprise, the wind whistle against his ears.

He closes his eyes and lets the blistering ice swallow him in.

Something drags him under, launches him against the stone walls-- and his lungs escape him, in a burst of pain in his spine. The water rushes past him, he can't move, can't struggle, can't even scream--

He gives in.

"Hey, stop staring off into space, sonny! So, what'll it be? You getting the appa or not?"

Kadomon stares back at him, brows raised-- and Natsuki Subaru breathes out a heavy sigh, reaching instinctively for the knife in his pocket.

Then the edges of his lips curl up in a tight and polite smile.

Shaking his head, he wordlessly refuses the offer. Then he starts walking down the street, heading off to nowhere in particular.

(Yeah.)

(Not that easy, huh?)