The Darkness Behind the Silence

— Everything’s piling up at once... What am I supposed to do now?

After spending all those years in an orphanage, I finally had a chance. A chance to actually live. Maybe even have a family.

But what was I supposed to say when I showed up at their door?

“Hi, I’m the son you left at an orphanage fourteen years ago.”

Yeah. That sounded great.

What if they didn’t want me?

If they were still here, why hadn’t they ever come looking for me all these years?

— Stop thinking... They must’ve had a reason.

I raised my head and looked at the driver through the rearview mirror.

— How much farther until we get there?

— Two streets. We’re basically there. That’ll be thirty lira.

I handed him the money and got out.

I took a deep breath.

Haaah...

Okay.

My breath didn’t stink.

My hair looked fine.

My clothes weren’t too bad either.

“Mom! Dad! I’m your son! Let’s live together!”

No.

No, that definitely wasn’t going to work.

“Hello, I’m from the orphanage in the city center. You left me there fourteen years ago. Why?”

Yeah.

That was better.

I needed to know.

Why they had abandoned me.

Why they hadn’t come to see me even once.

Why I had deserved any of it.

When I reached the house, I stood in front of the door for a few seconds, staring at it.

Finally, I raised my hand.

Knock, knock, knock.

My heart felt like it was about to burst out of my chest.

The door opened.

A young woman stood in front of me. She looked much younger than I had expected.

— Hello, handsome. Need something? Who are you looking for?

Whoa...

This woman...

Is she my mother?

What was I supposed to say?

Everything I had prepared disappeared from my head in an instant.

I was just about to open my mouth when I heard a child from inside.

— Mooom! Who is it? Did my toys arrive?

The woman turned her head toward the house.

— No, sweetie, it’s nothing impor—

— I’m really, really sorry! Wrong address!

I turned around and walked away as fast as I could.

I heard the woman say something behind me, but I didn’t turn around.

They had a child.

Another child.

But how?

If he was there, why wasn’t I?

So the problem wasn’t that they didn’t want children.

The problem was me.

My steps slowed.

My eyes started burning, but I didn’t want to cry. I didn’t want to be one of those kids who came back to the orphanage in tears.

I want a mother too.

I want a father too.

Was I really asking for that much?

I wish...

I wish I’d never been born.

I don’t want to go back to that orphanage ag—

— Hey! Sweetie, stop! There are cars!

I looked up.

A little girl was running toward the road.

— Mom, the butterfly is fly—

A horn.

A car.

It was coming too fast.

The girl was right behind me.

What should I do?

For a moment, I stayed where I was.

Forget it.

Did anyone ever help you?

No one even wanted you.

Why should I—

Damn it!

I started running.

The moment I reached the girl, I shoved her toward the side of the road with all my strength.

BAM!

The last thing I remembered was the car coming straight at me.

Am I alive?

Everything’s blurry...

Looks like I got lucky.

The girl?

Did I save her?

There were several people standing over me, but none of them looked like doctors or nurses.

I tried to speak.

Nothing came out.

I couldn’t get up either.

Did something happen to my body?

No...

Wait.

Why are these people so huge?

I tried to raise my hand.

A tiny hand entered my field of vision.

You’ve got to be kidding me.

Apparently, I hadn’t died.

Or at least my mind hadn’t.

I was in a different body.

A baby’s body.

But why do I still have my memor—

AAAAH!

Where the hell am I?!

Darkness suddenly swallowed everything around me.

I can’t see!

My whole body is burning.

Breathe...

I can’t breathe!

It feels like something is squeezing my throat.

I need to get out.

I need to get out of here!

I can’t brea—

Hah!

Light suddenly returned.

The people who had been standing over me were there again.

I felt like I was gasping for air, but at least my lungs were working.

What was that?

Where did I just go?

Wherever it was, I never wanted to go there again.

— See? I told you there was no need to worry just because he wasn’t crying. There he goes. Nothing’s wrong. Our baby is healthy.

What are they saying?

I couldn’t understand a single word.

They were speaking a different language.

Great.

I got hit by a car, turned into a baby, and now I can’t understand anyone either.

Nice start.

I spent my first days observing everything around me.

We seemed to be living in some kind of small village or town. But I doubted places this rural still existed in the time I came from.

Maybe I’m in the past?

Then again, I’d apparently been reborn. Was time travel really the weird part here?

For now, the only thing I knew for certain was that this wasn’t my old world.

People constantly called me Lucas or Luke. Lucas was probably my name, and Luke was just the shorter version.

Over time, I also learned the names of the people I could now call my parents.

Ralph and Elisa.

They both looked pretty young. At most, five or six years older than I had been before I died.

It was hard to tell how much time was passing. Sometimes I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again, hours had gone by. I spent more than half the day sleeping.

Being a baby seriously sucked.

You couldn’t walk by yourself.

You couldn’t talk.

When you were hungry, you had to wait for someone to feed you.

You crapped yourself...

And worst of all, you were fully aware of it.

A few months after I was born, a maid named Milia started coming to the house as well.

She was nice.

She looked after me, fed me, and even changed my diapers.

During those parts, I tried to stare at the ceiling as much as possible.

I still didn’t understand why we even needed a maid. They only had one child to take care of, and Elisa was home most of the time anyway.

But eventually I noticed something.

Even when Elisa was home, she didn’t just hand me over to Milia and disappear.

Sometimes she sat beside me even when she had nothing else to do.

Once, I got sick.

I barely slept all night. Every time I woke up, Elisa was still there. Sometimes she placed a wet cloth on my forehead. Other times, she quietly said things in that language I still couldn’t understand.

Near morning, I opened my eyes again and found her asleep while sitting in the chair beside me.

I reached out and touched her finger.

She didn’t wake up.

Strange...

Back in my old life, the staff at the orphanage took care of me whenever I got sick too.

They gave me medicine.

Checked my temperature.

But no one ever spent the whole night sitting beside my bed.

So this is what mothers are like.

That might have been the first time I truly thought of her as my mother.

Ralph was different.

No matter how tired he was when he came home, he loved picking me up. Sometimes he put me on his shoulders and walked around the house with me, playing until Elisa finally got angry at him.

I couldn’t understand what he was saying, but judging by his expressions, he was constantly talking nonsense.

Sometimes I couldn’t help wondering...

What kind of person would I have become if I’d had these things in my first life?

By the time I turned one, I started spending more time awake.

Once I got the hang of crawling, I conquered the entire ground floor in no time.

But it was starting to get boring.

There were other rooms upstairs that I had seen before.

They rarely took me up there.

Naturally, that only made me more curious.

And today, I had set my sights high.

I’m going to reach the second floor all by myself!

If they weren’t going to take me there, I’d go myself.

I figured if I slowly threw myself onto each step, I could climb all the way up.

Normally, whenever I went anywhere near the stairs, my mother immediately picked me up and carried me away.

After that happened a few times, I started waiting for a moment when no one was around.

Milia fed me, then took the dishes into the kitchen.

This was my chance!

I rushed toward the stairs.

Well...

As fast as a baby could rush.

It was harder than expected, but I managed to conquer six steps.

I was completely exhausted.

Who built these things?

They’re half my height!

Still, I could keep going.

Just one more...

And then—

THUD!

My hand slipped.

My grand climbing adventure ended as quickly as it had begun.

Not reaching the summit wasn’t particularly important at the moment, because everything hurt like hell!

Milia heard the noise and immediately came running.

She picked me up and began muttering something in the language I still didn’t fully understand.

— Holy powers born of goodness, bring an end to this pain...

I was just about to think, What nonsense is she talking about? when a faint glow spread from her hands.

And...

The pain disappeared.

A few seconds ago, everything hurt.

Now I felt nothing.

Wait.

What was that light?

Don’t tell me...

There’s magic in the world I reincarnated into?!

AND IT TOOK ME AN ENTIRE YEAR TO FIND OUT?!

Mom, Dad...

WHY HAS NEITHER OF YOU USED MAGIC AT HOME?!

By the time I turned three, I had finally figured quite a few things out.

I still couldn’t speak as fluently as an adult, but I had learned enough of the language to communicate with my family properly.

My German teachers would probably cry if they could see me now.

They had spent years trying and failing to shove a foreign language into my head, yet somehow I had learned this one as a baby in three years.

To be fair, I didn’t exactly have another option.

Probably because Elisa noticed how often I tried to sneak into the upstairs library, she started giving me illustrated children’s books whenever she couldn’t spend time with me.

Sometimes she sat me on her lap and read them herself.

Instead of looking at the pictures, I tried to match the words she said with the writing on the page.

Little by little, I figured out the letters and words.

Eventually, I could read simple books on my own.

Normally, I probably wouldn’t have learned a foreign language this quickly. But being constantly surrounded by it—and having a young brain—must have made things easier.

By then, I could walk comfortably too.

Stairs still weren’t quite as easy as walking, but at least I could climb them without falling.

Which meant I was finally ready for an operation I had been waiting a very long time to carry out.

The library.

My mother had started locking the door after noticing how obsessed I was with going inside.

But it was honestly a little insulting that she thought I hadn’t seen where she hid the key.

Under the bed.

Seriously, Mom?

I quietly entered the room and took the key.

— There you are, little key. You and I are going on a short trip. You’re coming with me.

I climbed the stairs and stopped in front of the door.

There it was...

My target.

I turned the key and slipped inside.

There weren’t that many books, but even this would keep me busy for quite a while.

Still, I hadn’t come here to study history today.

I was looking for one thing.

Magic.

I quickly started scanning the shelves.

“Political History.”

Pass.

“Introduction to Swordsmanship.”

A sword?

Who spends hours swinging a piece of metal around when magic exists?

Pass.

And...

Yes!

“Introduction to Magic.”

There you are!

I grabbed the book and immediately started flipping through the pages.

The first chapters talked about mana and magical talent.

According to the book, a person’s magical capacity was largely determined by traits they were born with. Bloodline, race, and genetic aptitude all played an important role.

It was possible to increase your mana through training, but not everyone started from the same place.

Wonderful.

New world, same inequality.

According to the book, families with powerful magical bloodlines had often risen into the nobility over time.

On top of that, magical education wasn’t cheap.

Books were expensive, skilled instructors were hard to find, and advanced magical knowledge wasn’t available everywhere.

That was why most students attending academies were nobles or children from wealthy families. Outsiders could still get in, but it wasn’t particularly common.

So apparently this world’s education system wasn’t very fair either.

Not that my old world had been that different.

If you had money, you got a better education.

If you were born into the right family, you got more opportunities.

Different world.

Same problems.

Whatever.

I wasn’t here to discuss politics.

I wanted magic.

According to the book, there were four main elements:

Fire, Water, Wind, and Earth.

Most forms of magic, aside from divine magic, were based around those four elements.

The origins of divine magic weren’t fully understood. It had supposedly been passed down through written records dating back to ancient times.

Normal magic, meanwhile, could be activated through specific words.

“Fireball.”

“Earth Wall.”

Things like that.

But there was something more interesting.

Silent magic.

The book said it was possible, but barely explained anything about it. It only mentioned that it was extremely rare and that no one fully understood how it was learned.

Interesting.

But that was probably way beyond my level for now.

Let’s learn the normal version before worrying about the silent one.

I started looking through the beginner spells.

“Fireball.”

No.

I didn’t want to burn the house down and end my second life at the age of three.

“Earth Wall.”

I’d make a complete mess of the place.

What was I supposed to tell my mother afterward?

That left Water and Wind.

“Water Ball” and “Whispering Wind” caught my attention.

Water Ball created a compressed mass of water that could be launched forward. At beginner level, apparently getting hit by it felt roughly like being punched.

So...

You could probably get the same result by throwing a water balloon at someone.

Whispering Wind, on the other hand, could move small objects, extinguish weak flames, and slightly redirect simple attacks.

That sounded more reasonable.

And apparently, the strength of a spell didn’t depend only on the spell itself.

The amount of mana you put into it mattered too.

Which meant that even a simple spell like this could become dangerous in the hands of someone powerful enough.

Decision made.

I put the book back and returned to my room.

Training time!

I took the glass from my desk and placed it on the floor.

Then I stood in front of it.

I stretched out my hand.

All right.

My first spell.

— Whispering Wind!

...

The glass didn’t move.

Not even a millimeter.

Are you kidding me?

Okay, I’m three, but come on.

I raised my hand again.

— Whispering Wind!

This time, I heard a faint whistling sound.

A small scrap of paper next to the glass trembled.

Whoa.

It worked!

Barely, but it definitely worked.

I tried again.

Whenever I cast the spell, I felt something strange inside me.

I didn’t really know how to describe it.

It was kind of like the relief you feel after finally going to the bathroom after holding it in forever...

Except at the same time, every muscle in my body tensed slightly.

Was this mana?

Trying to understand the feeling, I lifted my hand once more.

Then a crushing heaviness suddenly fell over me.

I was sleepy.

Really sleepy.

Probably because of this tiny body again.

Whatever.

One last try.

I wasn’t stopping until that glass moved.

I stretched my hand out again.

— Whispering Wi—

Huh?

My eyelids...

What’s happening?

I can’t keep them open.

They’re closing...