Timeless (Satoru Gojo x TBATE)

Prologue | I'm Done Dreaming

Tokyo Metropolitan Curse Technical College's First Year Teacher, Special Grade Sorcerer, head and pride of the Gojo Family—or used to anyway.

It was a mistake, a trap—the kind I normally wouldn't fall for ever. Yet, it has struck once again. That overwhelming sense of omnipotence that disregards all other sentiments, and it is that feeling that has brought upon my downfall. To be so prominent as to let your guard down, and to be so assured of victory as to be blind to the touches of the dark.

I have passed on. Now, I have found myself in a rather strange place. An airport where all my past companions has come to greet me, and welcome me to the place I never thought I'd be entering, not in a hundred years. That is, the afterlife.

To go north, or to go south. Either way, I didn't get to pick my choice. Not before everything collapsed into a gaping void. How so? That's so cruel. I have no regrets, or so I thought. I have died with honor, satisfied with the battle that has brought upon my demise. It's a shame to have lost, but it was all worth it.

Sure, it was a lonely death for the strongest, but I had fun.

But then, rather than a literal afterlife, I have come to a thought that this might all be a figment of my imagination. Suguru, the Principal, Nanami, everyone was merely an illusory display I created to conform to my subconscious desires of wanting to see them again. It was a fictitious world. It wasn't real. None of all these are.

It pissed me. I thought after all that, I finally had a place I could rest. I didn't live the best of lives, but I didn't live the worst either. I lived like a king. The heat of my strength was so scorching hot that no one could defy me. Power, status, wealth—all that meant nothing anymore.

Like shattering hourglass, my vision cracked until all that was left was nothingness. There was literally nothing in here. And for a good while, it stayed like that; until a light appeared at the farthest reaches of my eyes.

They said that when dying, you will see a light at the end of a dark tunnel. There were a lot of those cases, of patients close to death suddenly waking up sweating and panicked babbling about a light they saw.

I come out of a hole.

Only then, when I'm looking at a freshly tired face of a woman, and the idiotic sobbing face of a man, did I know what kind of hole I've popped out of.

I didn't even want to think about it. I do not know what happened, but I quite understand what's happening... to some degree.

I find myself in an environment far unfamiliar to the world I grew up in. Their language was different, unlike anything I've heard on Earth, but one I can fluently understand. Their faces, though human, didn't resemble any race I know. Then there are their hairs, the woman's seemingly natural auburn hair, and the man's crisp brown hair.

I try to feel my body as much as I could, but I feel so indescribably tiny. I can see my hands, and they're that of a toddler.

There's no other explanation.

I have been reincarnated, believe it or not. I am Arthur Leywin, the first son of the Leywins, and by the fortunate strike of a fortune, I have retained all my memories and experiences... that included the Six Eyes.

•••

A few years had gone by. Of course, being the natural prodigy I am, I have learned to crawl in the tender age of 3 months old. It's an achievement unlike anything I've reveled in.

I've learned to talk in a year, and I've learned to read half a year after that.

I spent most of my free time just crawling around our modest house, and reading some books about magic in the study.