WARNING: depiction of drugs.

 

“Back to School?”

Knock. Knock.

I hear a faint sound of knocking. I head to the door and try to open it.

“Hey, Luke. Are you awake yet? We have to go to school soon,”

I opened my eyes and blink it away when I realise I am still in bed. I become a little disoriented as I slowly try to make sense of my reality. It seems that I did not open the door at all. That was a dream.

Abby’s voice sounded once again from outside of my door while knocking. I got up off the bed and wobbled to the source of the sound. My eyes could barely open as I am feeling deadbeat from cleaning up my room yesterday that occupied my whole day. I managed to open the door after touching everywhere for the door handle.

“Luke, are you okay?”

I can tell that Abby is worried about me without looking at her face. My eyes are still closed after all. I could not hold back a yawn while nodding.

“You haven’t showered yet?”

Abby then proceeds to push me in and straight to the bathroom while nagging, “We are going to be late and I am never late. You have to get ready now and maybe we can save enough time for you to eat your breakfast,”

When I hear the sound of the bathroom door closing behind me, I pry open my eyes a little to guide myself to the sink. At the same time, I heard Abby exclaim from the outside.

“OH. MY. GOODNESS,”

I guess she finally noticed how clean my room has become after my one-day effort of trying to make the room livable. I ignore her disbelief and start washing my face. When my eyes can finally open completely, I brushed my teeth and shower in no time.

On the plus side, I am also glad that I clean my room all by myself because I found that familiar shady powder hidden in the most obvious place. Well, it is obvious to me but not to them, I guess. They would not have found it unless they thoroughly search the room but I live with a man who has his stashes all over the house. This level of the hidden stash is amateur.

I flushed those things away after I checked every possible place that can be used to hide it. Nobody ever keeps their stash hidden at one place. It applies to money too but I guess he has never been caught using it before so he arrogantly hides everything at the same spot.

I might come from the slum but Mama said if I want to be better than all of them, I should never touch those dirty things. Aside from not being able to afford it, I have also seen enough people who are found dead from using those things and I don’t want to end up like them. My life was bad enough. At least I wanted to die properly… but I still didn’t though.

It’s sad to know that this boy had everything I wanted but he wasted his life away on those.

I slap my face to get those gloomy thoughts away.

Who cares. Right now, I’m him and I will live my own life my way.

After Abby has calmed down, she gazes at me with an indecipherable expression. My heart starts speeding up as my gut is telling me something is wrong but Abby suddenly smiles at me.

"Let's go. Uncle will send us to school today,"

She doesn't wait for me to answer her and walks out the door.

Seeing her act as if nothing allows me to recover. I follow her but maintain a few steps distance to allow me to calm my loud beating heart.

For a moment there, it felt like she knew that I was not him.

Even so, I can't tell her anything and I'm not sure what will happen if she found out that I took over her friend's body. I don't know how I got into the current situation but it's not something I can tell anyone without sounding crazy. 

What if they believe me but decided that I am an evil spirit who is possessing this body. The outcome wouldn't be great either. I've heard crazy stories from the streets about these things. I should really be careful but I can't pretend to be him because I don't know where to start since I have zero knowledge on this body's previous actions and personality aside from his usage of ‘that’.

I manage to decide not to think about it for now and do my own way as I see fit when the time comes right when we reach the car.

Abby enters the backseat smoothly and pats the seat next to her after moving her body further inside. I enter the car after letting out a deep breath. 

The interior of the car is clean and neat. It’s a little hard to get comfortable since I barely know them but I pretended to be fine. My ‘father’ is sitting behind the wheel while there is another person sitting next to him. I can’t see his facial feature since I’m sitting right behind him but he did give a brief greeting when I entered the car.

No one is talking during the whole car ride but not a single one even tried to break off the silence. I’m feeling relieved since I don’t have to talk.

I probably need to find a way to understand my current situation. If I am not mistaken, schools should have a library. I’ve never been to one but I remember hearing something about it. There should be books that can explain my situation.

As for my ‘family’, I guess I will find out who they are over time. I can’t approach this too casually or they will figure out something is wrong. I need to be wary of Abby. She seems like a person that could figure out that there is something wrong with me.

“We’re here,” My ‘father’ spoke to us after stopping on the side near the school gate. It allows me to break away from my thoughts and refocused myself to face school which I previously had no chance of going to.

Both Abby and I got out of the car after saying thank you.

When the two of us enter the school compound, the car finally drives away. Abby stares at the disappearing car before turning to me with a smile.

“Well, it probably feels like the first day of school again for you but since we’re both seniors, there aren’t any classes to attend except those taking up projects to improve their qualification when applying for university. Coincidentally, today’s the result of our final school exam. Let’s check it out,”

It only dawns on me that the size of the school is huge as I look around while following Abby. When we got to the hallway to which Abby explains was the building for seniors, there were a lot of hostile eyes on me. They started to whisper among themselves. I was able to catch most if not some of the things they said because of my good hearing and my ability to read lips.

"They say that he almost dies of a drug overdose,"

"He has been hanging out with the wrong crowds,"

"Why does he bother showing up at school when he has been skipping almost every day?"

"Trash. They should just expel him,"

“I don’t know why Abby still bothers sticking around him,”

“They’re childhood friends but I’m not surprised that she would be fed up with him soon,”

Oh, I see now. He isn’t liked by these guys. Well, that's actually great cause that means nobody will get close to me nor were they close enough to notice the differences between him and me. I was worried if he had other friends but I'm glad Abby is his only friend. At least, right now it seems that way.

Abby suddenly stops in her tracks. She looks around with a soft smile.

“You kids run along now. Don’t you have projects to complete? Would be a shame if the project fails before it even starts,” Her voice sounds light and airy but the atmosphere around her turns tense.

Everyone stops whispering and disperse in groups or individually. Disappearing into various corners, leaving only the two of us in the hallway.

Abby turns to me with a cheeky smile.

“Let’s go see your results,”

Abby moves to the board that has large white papers on it. Written on the paper are mostly numbers. I look at Abby with a baffled look. She gave me a smile and started sliding her finger through the list and stopped.

“This is your results...,” Her words trail off as she examines the results.

After a long pause, Abby turns to look at me with a frown.

“Your result is pretty bad. Let me ask you this, do you still want to attend university?”

I was taken aback by her question. I don’t answer her right away because I haven’t thought of these things. I already feel like being able to attend high school is great but then she told me there aren’t any more classes and I definitely feel disappointed.

The two of us remain quiet until someone comes by and talks to Abby. She tells Abby that the student council requires her advice and wants her to sit through the meeting. Abby responds to her with a smile saying that she will attend and request the girl to go first.

When the girl leaves, Abby returns her attention to me.

“You don’t have to answer me right away. Since you didn’t take up the extra credits project, just use this time to give it some thought,”

Abby bid me goodbye without telling me to go anywhere and left me standing by the board alone.

I take my time looking at the board without understanding a word. I give up trying to understand it and decide to walk around and sort my emotions. Everything is new to me. I've only ever had myself to rely on for many years. Never really has any chance to learn at school for that matter.

I walk around the school myself and notices most people sit in groups and those that are alone have their heads buried in books.

I finally found a door with the sign ‘Library’ and decided to enter. The quiet ambience is really soothing. The library has two floors and is wide. There were only a few students inside at the moment and nobody cared when I entered. 

I notice some of them are using a laptop. I have never used one before but I hear they are useful to look for something. However, it would take me a while to understand the usage of it so I hit the shelves.

My first choice in the category is to look in the supernatural sections. The library definitely has a wide collection. It’s hard for me to find what I need. I stand there looking at the shelves blankly until someone calls up the name I am now used to hearing.

“Luke, what are you looking for?” A pale skin girl with Phoenix eyes and a small statue stands a few meters away from me.

I don’t know how to answer her so it took me a few moments before I answered her. Thankfully she seems to be very patient with waiting for my answer.

“Books… About reincarnation… I think,” I mumble the last part as I am not sure what to look for.

The girl nods as if she understands me and starts looking at the shelves row by row. Occasionally she pulls out a few books but only keeps one or two in her hands. After a while, she finally stops and passes me the books.

“These should help you. These are ancient texts and research books that discuss reincarnations. If you are looking for fictional books, there are some novels I can recommend to you but they are mostly online novels. At least these books are research books so they have a glossary that can help you jump straight to the topic you want to read about but novels are creative stories people make up which means you have to read it to understand their world-building. If anything you can just ask me. I’ll be at the counter as usual,” The girl doesn’t seem to be the talkative type but she definitely gives lengthy explanations about the books and it shows that she enjoys reading.

She walks to sit behind the counter she pointed earlier after taking a book from the shelves.

Along with the books she gives me, I move to an empty table and start flipping it. I decided to use the glossary to find the pages I want. It took me a while to understand the purpose of a glossary but the moment I understood, it was easier for me to skip to the pages I needed.

“Hey, Luke. What are you doing?” Abby’s voice breaks away my focus from the book. I decide to not explain much and brush it off as if nothing.

“Oh, these books seem interesting. I bet Elaine recommended them to you. Also, I haven’t seen you in the library for ages. Took me a while to find you. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Let’s go eat,”

When Abby invites me to eat, that’s when I realised that I have used all my mourning to read these books. The books use big words to which I had to take a dictionary to try and make sense of the words but when Abby came and broke my focus I was actually done with the books. Although the books have an in-depth discussion about reincarnation, it doesn’t seem to apply to me. None of them talks about a soul taking over a body within the same era and age. I decide to not think about this and head to the canteen with Abby.

The moment we were done with lunch, I told Abby that I am going back to the library. Abby immediately answers cheerfully that she will accompany me to walk there as she wants to chat with Elaine for a bit before going back to the student council room.

I finally realise who Elaine is when Abby cheerfully talks to the girl that helped me look for the book. The two of them chatted a little about the results and it seems that Elaine has gotten amazing grades from the exams. Elaine asks Abby how she knows her grades to which Abby shamelessly admits that she memorised Elaine’s student id. It seems that Elaine’s grades have landed herself a full scholarship to one of the top universities.

However, when Elaine asks Abby about her university choices, Abby seems to answer it vaguely then makes a joke as if to change the topic. The two only stop conversing after a member of the student council drops by and drags Abby to their room.

Abby's exaggerated reaction to being dragged off made Elaine and I chuckle.

Since the books didn’t help me find what I needed, I decided to ask Elaine for more information about the online novel she mentions.

She brought out a laptop that seems familiar to me and turned it on. After that, she starts showing me the link she uses to read her novels and I can support the author by buying the chapters if the story is to my liking or if I want to read more.

Due to the number of reincarnation novels, she had to ask me if I had anything specific that I am looking for. I didn’t outright tell her my thoughts but mentions vaguely about what I am searching for.

“Oh, that’s transmigration. Similar to reincarnation,” She then starts to list down a few good novels and says that she will email me.

I had to nod as if I understand and continue to observe her actions. It seems that she opened up a virtual mail and sent it over to my virtual mail. Luckily she knows my email because if she asked me, I wouldn’t know how to answer her.

She then tells me if I want to read these novels now, I can do so with the library’s computer. I decline her offer by saying that I want to read the books she gives me again to further understand it but in reality, I don’t even know how to access my virtual email. I might need to figure that one out when I go back home later.

The time moves by so quickly that I only notice it is the end of the day only when Abby comes and pick me up at the library.

As the two of us are walking to the school gate, Abby decides to ask for my decision if I already made one. If I have not, she doesn’t mind giving me more time.

“I… I think I still want to study,” When I was reading the books earlier at the library, I realised that there is so much for me to learn and I feel like if I am given the chance to learn why not continue.

Abby instantly gives me the widest smile she could and she could barely contain her happiness as she let out a small laugh.

“I’m glad you said that. I guess we have to fix your grades before the university's admission test starts. Oh, we can also get you to do a project on your own if you want. Ah, I know exactly who can tutor you and also supervise your project,” Abby happily rants about her planning without truly explaining to me about her plan.

I notice that I seem to have been infected by her happiness and catch myself smiling. That is until Abby suddenly squeals of happiness to which it surprised me.

“He’s here! Let’s go,” Abby doesn’t wait for my reaction and immediately pulls me out of the school gate.