◆◇◆
About three months passed.
I still could not understand what sort of situation this was, but there was one thing I could confirm.
A newborn baby, clad in nothing but a pure white diaper, with a tiny body, hands like freshly sprouted bamboo shoots, and bright, alert eyes.
That was right. I had been reborn.
And I had accepted that fact.
Was this truly an illusion, or was it reality?
After spending three months lying in bed and lost in thought, I accepted reality.
Reincarnation.
Being born into a new life while retaining every memory of one’s life before death.
I had once heard of it from a kindly-faced priest at an Inari Shrine I had visited to honor the souls of my comrades.
I did not particularly believe in Buddha or gods, so I had merely let it pass... but who could have imagined that I myself would experience reincarnation?
Was life truly nothing but a succession of strange, unknowable fates?
Rather than purifying the soul of an old man, faded beyond all fading, it had granted me a new life.
When I opened my eyes, the young woman holding me for the first time and the young man holding the newborn baby appeared to be my parents.
The couple, who still looked quite young, were, even by a rough estimate, younger than my great-great-granddaughter.
By my standards, they looked only slightly older than my great-great-great-grandchild, who had been attending university.
Well, by the standards of the Heisei era, they had married rather early, but by the standards of the Meiji era, when I had married, they were a couple who had wed somewhat late.
I had felt and realized it from the moment I was born, but it seemed I had not been born in Japan.
Not a word of Japanese came from my parents’ mouths.
An entirely different language, and facial features that did not appear East Asian.
The clothes they wore were garments I had never seen even once in all my life.
Even after examining the objects in the house, I could not figure out where this place was.
What was more, there were no electrical outlets for plugging in cords, nor any ordinary appliances to be seen.
If I had been reborn, should this not at least have been a time beyond the age in which I died?
Why had the world of the future regressed so badly?
There were no power lines, not even an iron that cost less than ten thousand yen, an old junk television, or a single radio.
I could only worry about this country’s future.
◆◇◆
Another half year passed.
Over these past six months, I had listened in on my parents’ conversations and grown somewhat accustomed to the language here, until I was able to understand what they said.
I had never been called brilliant or a genius, but as long as one was human, repeating something over and over built experience, eventually allowing one to become skilled at it.
Speech was no different. Even if it was the language of another country, listening to it repeatedly would eventually allow one to understand it.
The fact that, perhaps because I had become a child, my brain was more active and learned everything quickly also played a part.
By this time, I could hold up my head properly and crawl about using both my arms and legs.
But I only moved when it was truly necessary. Normally, I moved as little as possible, spending most of my time lying in bed or in a rocking chair, looking out the window at the scenery.
It seemed that even though I had become young again, the habits I had acquired while living as an old man were not easily corrected.
In my previous life, I had idled away my time, reminiscing about bygone days and living within the past.
Unlike me—
"The moment I take my eyes off him, he’s off somewhere again."
"Isn’t it good that he’s healthy? We were worried because he never cried at all when he was first born."
"He still doesn’t cry much these days, either."
Rudy, my twin brother born on the same day as me, behaved like a proper baby, roaming all over the house and troubling our parents.
He was a newborn with our father’s sparse brown hair, like a field after the harvest, and our mother’s jade-colored eyes.
Every now and then, he did incomprehensible things such as putting Mother’s underwear on his head, but unlike me, he possessed the childishness proper to a baby.
Surely that was what babies were supposed to do—act in ways adults could not understand and draw all their parents’ attention at once.
Father held my brother as he spoke with Mother, then approached me where I lay in my chair and leaned over me.
Father stared at me with worry-filled eyes and poked my cheek repeatedly with his finger.
"Rudy is healthy now, so there’s no problem with him, but I’m worried about Lumi. Maybe he’s frail? All he does is lie in bed all day or sit in his chair looking out the window."
"And he doesn’t cry, either, and even his babbling is quiet. Could there be something wrong with his health?"
"I don’t know. There aren’t any obvious symptoms right now."
It seemed my parents worried about me more than they did about my brother, Rudy.
There was nothing wrong with my health, but perhaps because of my old man’s habits, I moved and reacted less than Rudy, making them think I was weakly.
And there was one more thing that worried my parents.
"But he is our child, and yet his hair is purple. There must surely be something wrong with his health."
As Mother said, my hair was a bluish violet, nearly black, rather than the brown and gold my parents possessed.
When a child was born with hair that could never have come from either of them, Father had nearly pressed Mother about it. But because Rudy had been born alongside me, he concluded it was absolutely impossible that Mother had had an affair.
As I grew, they came to agree on one thing.
That I was a sickly child, or that there was something wrong with my body.
Thanks to that, Mother’s concern was focused on me rather than my brother.
I could only feel sorry that I was receiving even the share of attention and love that should have gone to my brother, who ought to have been receiving Mother’s affection at that age.
At the very least, I tried crawling about from time to time to ease my parents’ worries. But whenever I attempted to crawl along the floor, Mother or Lilia, the maid of the household, would pick me up with startled expressions. As a result, I gradually moved about the house even less.
However, even the time in which I could move about came to an end one afternoon.
A decisive event occurred—one that left my parents with no choice but to cherish me like a sacred treasure.
As usual, I sat in my rocking chair, observing Father along with the view of the garden.
Whenever I watched Father swing his Western-style sword across the broad expanse of lawn, I lost all sense of time.
At first, in this modern age where one needed a license to possess and wield a sword, I even worried whether Father was in his right mind for swinging such a heavy blade.
But as time passed, I gradually grew used to it.
If anything, the sight of Father wielding his sword was so novel that I wanted to learn it by watching.
At the same time, memories of wielding a sword in my youth came vividly back to me, as though a fire were being kindled in my chest.
"Haaah!"
"!!"
"Heh. You’re stronger than you look, aren’t you? No one has ever evaded my thrust until now."
"You are the first person I have failed to bring down with the first strike."
"Really? That’s... an honor!"
"!!"
The first opponent I had ever failed to defeat with a single blow.
His sword had advanced straight ahead, swift and unhesitating.
From my position as his opponent, it felt as though I had been standing before a raging storm.
Looking back now, I could scarcely believe that my younger self had received that man’s blade on equal terms.
It was also quite astonishing that, as time passed, we met again and became comrades who fought back-to-back.
At the time, capable samurai whose names had become somewhat known gathered together to preserve the peace, guarding the streets of Kyoto.
Among them, his swordsmanship was exceptional. According to another comrade’s assessment—
"That’s right. His sword is truly the sword of a fierce warrior. Even among all of us here, who are no slouches ourselves, he fights as though he’s dealing with children."
When it came to the sword, he was a true genius.
Throughout all my long years, there had never been anyone who made my heart race as much as he did.
Perhaps I had become so absorbed in recalling memories that were no less than a page from my youth that I forgot my surroundings.
‘Oh no!’
As I leaned forward to get a closer look at Father, the rocking chair tipped over and I fell to the floor.
"Aah!"
The instant I hit the floor with a thud, I heard a scream.
Mother stood where the sound had come from, her laundry fallen to the ground. With one hand over her mouth, she looked down at me with a face gone pale.
"Lumi! Are you all right?!"
Mother rushed over and picked me up.
When she saw a little red blood trickling from the back of my head, she seated me on the floor with a frightened expression.
"Mother will heal you right away. Lumi, wait just a moment. The sacred power is a bountiful blessing, unto those who have lost their strength—"
Mother placed a hand on my head and was just about to chant that strange, incomprehensible spell when—
"M-Ma’am! Please wait a moment!"
Lilia, who had been watching while holding Rudy, urgently called out to Mother.
"What is it? We have to heal Lumi’s wound quickly."
"No, before you heal his wound, please look where young master Luminous fell. The place with the blood on it. Where young master Luminous’s blood touched—"
"What about the place with blood on it... wh-what?!"
"Dyaa?!"
At Lilia’s words, Mother turned her gaze toward the floor where I had struck my head and left blood. Her mouth fell open in shock.
Curious about what had startled Mother and Lilia so much, I looked there as well.
And I understood why they were shocked.
‘A sprout is growing from the floor where my blood was just spilled?’
A green sprout had emerged from the spot on the floor where my blood had fallen.
It had not merely sprouted.
The sprout grew at an astonishing speed, then bloomed into a small flower.
It took less than a minute for the flower to bloom.
Did flowers really bloom that quickly?
No. A wonder of nature that should have taken at least several months had unfolded in a single minute.
And it had happened beneath a dry wooden floor, without a single seed.
"N-No way...!"
Watching this sight, Mother’s face stiffened gravely as she reached out and touched my wound.
Then...
"N-No. The wound... the wound is gone."
As though she had seen something impossible, Mother repeatedly pressed the back of my head in search of the wound that should have been there, but it was real.
The wound on my head had vanished as though it had been washed away, leaving behind only a small bloodstain.
And a flower had bloomed where that blood had fallen.
Having witnessed both of these things with her own eyes, Mother suddenly pulled me into her arms, sobbing.
"What... what are we going to do? My son... my son is a God’s Child!"
"...Ma’am."
"That’s why his hair color was completely different from ours. Ah, this is terrible!"
Holding me in her arms, Mother anxiously stamped her feet.
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