Chapter 3: The Transparent World
[Seiji's POV]
I said the time and place I was born in could not have gotten worse.
I jinxed myself because it got so much worse.
Demon Slayer. That was the world I was living in. That was my new reality.
A manga/anime that was based in the Taisho era of Japan. The main villains of the anime were the demons who fed on human flesh and were vulnerable to sunlight. These demons were hunted by demon slayers who were the good guys.
It was a dark shounen where almost every named character had thier families slaughtered by demons one way or the other.
So if I was being honest, it was not surprising that I suffered the same fate.
But god was it a hard fate to swallow, I couldn't accept it. I remember crying and mourning for days after losing my family. I cried until everything felt numb.
But after a week passed, I was fully at peace with my situation, I was lucky because other than the initial grief I felt, I did not bear any lifelong traumas.
Because my mentality was fundamentally different from everyone else, I had known my family for only three years while I lived 13 years in my past life without a family.
So what did that mean?
It meant that deep down, I knew I never really had a family. The family I got in my second life were all blessings that I did not deserve. It was like a privilege that I was even able to live with them and enjoy life for three years.
So instead of mourning over what I lost, I learned to be thankful for what I had.
You could say that I was dealing with thier death much better compared to a child who knew his family his whole life. To them, it must've felt like someone had destroyed their whole world. But to me, it felt like someone stole everything from me after I won the lottery.
Two different feelings from the same event. The mind was a powerful thing.
After a week, all I felt was hatred for those who had stolen from me. I despised the beings who robbed me of the warmth of a family. I would never forgive them, especially that old demon who refused to kill me.
Fuck that ugly piece of shit.
It has been eight days since that night and life had been silent for me ever since. With my hearing completely destroyed by the 'blood demon art' of that old demon, It was just like my past life, I was deaf and without family.
Talk about going back to square one.
In a short time, I got used to being deaf again. I even regained my old skill of reading a person's lips to hear what they were saying. I guess old skills die hard.
But even though I was living in perpetual silence, I was far from being lonely. In fact, it was the opposite as I was never left alone since the incident happened.
All the villagers came together to care for and comfort me. It got to the point that people were actually fighting over whose house I was going to stay in and take care of me.
Not only that, the villagers were quick to clean up the mansion and prepare a big funeral for my dead family. And I kid you not, people I had never even met before cried harder than even myself at the funeral.
What could be the reason? Was it sympathy? Was it the pity for the small child who lost his whole family in one night? Or was it human kindness?
It was none of them.
The real reason was greed. As I said before, my family was exceptionally wealthy due to my father and brother, so these people were trying to get on my good side so that I would choose them to be my legal guardian.
I was still a child in front of the law so I could not inherit the wealth of my family until I came of age. Until then, my family's wealth was to fall into the hands of my guardian.
Normally, a relative of mine should be my guardian but as I did not have other relatives, it would have to be one of these villagers who would become my legal guardian.
Although eventually I would regain full ownership of my inheritance, there was still many benefits people could gain while I was young. For example; they could use our land to cultivate crops, live in our mansion and even launder my money with the excuse of using it to raise me.
Truly disgusting but that was just human nature, you do everything to thrive. Especially in a time like this where war and poverty were constant.
I knew all of this because they did not hold back what they said in front of the kid who they thought had completely lost his hearing. I might be deaf now but like I said, I could still read thier lips easily.
...
"Can you understand me."
A stupid question to ask a kid who just lost his hearing but okay, I could entertain you - random villager who acted like my favourite uncle since I lost my parents. At least he was nice enough to feed me good food and let me have my own room until now.
I nodded.
"Really? Then do you remember what happened that night? Did a demon really attack your family?" he asked with exaggerated body language.
I just stared at him with the most blank face I could give. People of this age were truly insensitive. Or maybe it's just a boy thing. Did he not realize I could be traumatized and I might break down again if he kept bringing that up? I was not, but still.
I guess they couldn't help being curious as demons and gods were in the line between myth and reality. They just assumed a demon attacked because of the gore but some argued that it was a wild animal from the mountain, a bear maybe.
"I don't know if anyone has told you this but you have a really creepy stare." he said that part to himself but I saw it.
Actually, no one had told me such things. But I guess it was reasonable for my gaze to change after I gained what I did.
I continued staring at the man's face and focused on my eyes. Then my gaze pierced right through his head and I saw his brain. Literally.
I saw his brain and his skull. My eyes traveled down and I saw his expanding lungs and pulsing heart. I clearly saw how his heart was pumping blood throughout his body and I saw his muscles twitch with every movement he made.
I was also able to discern the minor muscle tear in his biceps, quads and shoulder which hints at the work he was doing in the fields.
It felt like I had an inbuilt x-ray vision in my eyes. I could see everything I wanted and hadn't desired. I could also read his body language like an open book, and predict his movements by the breath of his lungs and the contraction of his muscles.
At first, I thought I was merely seeing things. I thought that it was the result of a trauma I got from seeing my loved ones eaten alive.
But soon enough, I realized that it had nothing to do with trauma. Instead, it was one of the rarest powers in the Demon Slayer World.
It was called the transparent world.
People with this ability were able to see the inner workings of any creature. They could perceive the flow of blood, breathing, muscular contractions and joint movements of the creature they are looking at. They could then use this ability to predict the movement of said creature, find thier weaknesses and even discern thier genetic makeup which helped them distinguish demons from humans or even trace back their descendants.
Not only that, the transparent world also boosted the perception of the user and gave them faster reflexes. There might be other things that were not mentioned in the manga as well.
There were only 7 known users in the whole world and the only way to attain the transparent world was after activating the Demon Slayer mark, another unique power of the Demon Slayer world.
It was truly odd how I got this power without awakening my mark. My only guess was it had something to do with me being deaf - because as we know, the lost of one sense could enhance other senses.
To be honest, I was not worried about how I got it. Only how I was going to use it.
"I will leave you now." the man said with nonsensical hand gestures.
"Call me if you need anything."
He went out of the room and slid the door shut. I was left alone in the room, sitting upright on the futon. Somehow, the perpetual silence became heavier after I was alone.
I wondered why I had not killed myself already.
I did not have a reason to live any longer. I already died in my past life and everything after that was just extra. As I said, the time I was able to spend with my family was already a privilege.
And this world was not even my own. This was the world of Demon Slayer, a world where I did not belong. A place where I should not exist.
I looked around the room and observed every difference between this life and my past life. The sliding doors, the decoration of the room, the futons, the age, the culture etc. It was all something vastly different from my first life.
I felt like an outsider.
My family was the only anchor I had to this world. They were the ones who made me feel like I belonged here but with them gone, I felt like I should not be here at all.
So why had I not just killed myself?
What could I possibly expect from continuing to live? I was deaf and I was an orphan, was this not exactly as I was in my first life?
No, scratch that. It was worse with the presence of demons and the upcoming world wars and disasters. It would be easier to just kill myself right here and finally rest or fade away to nothingness.
Such thoughts were loud in the silence of my world. I contemplated for a long time until I eventually came to a conclusion.
Hope. That was the biggest thing that made me want to keep living. The hope was that everything would not remain as it was. Maybe I would eventually find a new family to live for, maybe I would make friends, fall in love and find a reason to fear death again.
Hope became a pillar of my world.
And there was one more thing that prevented me from committing suicide right then and there.
Demons.
Fuck those ugly pieces of shit, especially that old demon who took everything for me. I would slaughter every last one of them.
My hatred created a goal for me and I found a reason to continue living once more. That goal became my driving force during the darkest moments of my life.
I knew I was capable of realizing this dream with my future knowledge and the transparent world. So I got up from the futon and walked towards the mirror in the room.
I stood in front of it and looked at my reflection.
A young boy with dark circles around his eyes stared back at me with purple eyes that glowed eerily. His eyes looked dead and alive at the same time.
He wore a black haori and he had a messy purple hair on top of his head. His skin was pale and he was quite big for a kid his age.
So that was me.
'Not bad.' I thought to myself. I haven't seen my reflection in a week but I still looked good as ever. I was handsome in my past life and I was sure to grow up to be just a beautiful in this life as well.
Well, another reason to continue living I guess.
I focused my eyes and then I looked at the inner workings of my own body. It was kinda gross as my brain, lungs, muscles, heart and all of my organs revealed themselves under my gaze.
This was it.
This ability would be extremely useful to grow stronger. It was every science-based bodybuilder's dream ability and it would allow me to train with the utmost efficiency.
Not only that, it would help me immensely in learning about breathing styles.
'Well, what am I waiting for? Another demon attack?' I thought to myself when I saw that the injuries I got were mostly healed.
Then I got down and I began doing push-ups while carefully looking at my own reflection.
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