"I quit."
After careful contemplation and reflection on the stories shared by his sister, Toshi arrived at a disheartening realization. He saw himself as a self-centered narcissist, and he believed that the root of his problems began when he became a pop idol. In light of this, he decided it was necessary to confront his manager face-to-face and express his intentions. He requested that she be allowed to visit him, with his parents insisting on being present during the meeting.
The manager was a woman in her mid-thirties with slicked-back hair and a smile dripping with greed. She appeared shocked by Toshi's decision. "Baby! The King of J-pop! You can't just quit!" she exclaimed, her voice filled with disbelief. "The internet is a-buzz! Everyone is worried about you! You should capitalize on the momentum! Strike while the iron is hot!"
Toshi, lying in his hospital bed, marveled at the apparent callousness of the woman before him, "Look, I was dead, which led to memory loss. I was pumped full of Rohypnol, which also causes memory loss. I got raped, which... you guessed it! Can result in memory loss." He sighed. "I'm pretty certain that not only do I have no recollection of the job, but those memories won't be returning anytime soon."
The manager thought for a second, "So basically you are saying you want to take a few weeks off. It'll be tough, but if you promise to work more weekends, I'm sure we can move some dates around."
Toshi's mother spoke quietly, "I'm going to kill her." Then leaped for the manager's throat.
Hirofumi held her back, "Asuka! Don't!" Eventually, she stopped and just glared at the manager. Hirofumi let out a sigh when she finally relaxed.
"Because I'm going to kill her first."
Toshi's Father spun around and clocked the manager in the face. Toshi was surprised for two reasons. One, that his father was cold cocking a woman. Two, the punch was super lame. The manager just staggered back a few feet, "Hold it!" She rubbed her jaw and kept her hands up to block any further blows, "Let's just calm down for a second and think about this logically."
Hirofumi was on the verge of launching himself at the manager when Toshi sprang out of bed to stand between them. Facing his father, he urged, "Dad, just let it go!" Glancing back at the manager, he declared, "No time off, no breaks, nothing. I quit. I don't care about the contract. I woke up and didn't remember my NAME. There is NO WAY I-"
Toshi abruptly stopped when he noticed the manager checking out his exposed backside. His hospital gown had come undone, and her expression made it clear she wouldn't mind if it revealed a bit more. Toshi was so bewildered by this unexpected turn of events that he was temporarily silenced. Toshi's mom also noticed, but she was not stunned. One might say she was displeased. Unhappy. A bit miffed, even.
Perhaps one might say she was filled with the white-hot rage of a thousand exploding suns and an urge for homicide to give Vlad The Impaler a run for his money.
Yes. Let's go with that one.
"DIE!" Was the only word to fly from her mouth, along with some spittle as she lunged for a throat she so desperately wished to tear out.
The manager snapped her gaze up towards Asuka, "Oh shit!" Then ran away as fast as she could.
It took both Toshi and his father to hold her back, and even then she managed to drag both of them to the door. Toshi yelled at his mom, "STOP!" several times before he succeeded in getting through to her.
Asuka finally stopped, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly, "I'm calm." Before she turned to glare at Toshi and give him an 'I told you so' look.
Toshi let go of her arm and took a step back, "Okay! Fine! You were right!" He gestured about aimlessly, "It was a bad idea inviting that woman here. I'm still glad I said it to her face." He slapped his hands together as if dusting them off, "I'm done."
Hinako looked embarrassed as she averted her eyes, "Can you tie your gown, PLEASE?"
Toshi looked behind himself, "Ah." He proceeded to do as requested, "Sorry."
His sister stepped closer and put a hand on Toshi's shoulder while keeping her eyes looking above the waist at all times, "You sure about this? You used to tell me being up on stage was the only time you felt alive."
Toshi looked back at his sister, "Then I was a goddamn fool. If I can't feel alive around my family, then I had to be the worst brother imaginable." His parents looked shocked at his words as if they never, in a million years, expected to hear such a thing.
Hinako cleared her throat and then lightly punched Toshi in the shoulder, "Stop making me feel things. I can only take so much."
Toshi squinted at his sister, "Uh... okay?" He shrugged, "By the way, when do I get out of here?"
His parents looked at each other. Asuka answered, "Tomorrow. It's been four days and... we talked. We're all moving in with me. We already hired movers, so we'll need to do a bit of unpacking over the weekend."
Toshi frowned and looked at his sister, "Wait. Are you getting yanked from your school? What about your friends?"
Hinako smiled softly and squeezed Toshi's shoulder, "I already live with Mom. You live with Dad. So I'm not moving to a new school, you are."
Toshi's father chimed in, "We both think you need a fresh start. You didn't-" He cut himself, "You know what? Never mind. Let's not get bogged down in useless details."
Toshi noticed something was left unsaid, but let the subject go with a nod of his head, "Ah. Okay then. I look forward to..." He struggled with how to phrase things, "My... new home?"
Asuka nodded, "New to you home."
Toshi smiled softly as he echoed his mother, "New to me."
Toshi kept up the conversation for a while. When visiting hours came to an end, he spent another ten minutes persuading them to go home and get some sleep. When he was alone he reached for the controls to turn off the lights.
Reclining in the bed, left alone with his thoughts, Toshi gazed at the dim ceiling. The past few days had been grueling, marked by extensive testing where every nook and cranny of his body underwent examination, from poking and prodding to various perforations. Throughout, he had hoped they would unearth something useful. The only thing they discovered was that there was nothing to be discovered. This was by far the most baffling of developments to the doctors.
They had scans of his brain before he woke up, revealing clear damage and a substantial portion of his grey matter as totally inert. Now, there was no trace of such issues—a complete recovery. Unfortunately, this made the doctors more suspicious about his memory loss. The prevailing theory was that while the brain had rebounded, it was akin to a hard drive with wiped information. An alternative hypothesis suggested that the index file might have been destroyed, leaving his memories intact but inaccessible.
Nobody suggested the possibility that he was a transmigrator placed in the body of a dead child by a flakey god.
Toshi rose from the bed and made his way to the window like he had several times over the past couple of days. He reached up to part the slats, allowing a view through the blinds. Doing this had become a bit of an obsession of his, as of late.
He stared out across the divide to the billboard on the building across the street. On the billboard, a nearly naked, muscular man adorned only with stars over his nipples and a pair of bulging speedos was the center of Toshi's attention. The model held a long-neck bottle of beer at crotch height that had foam practically exploding from it. Above and below the figure, the following words were prominently displayed:
Swallow The Flavor!
Sperma Dry Original Craft Beer
Toshi kept staring as he slowly knocked his head against the wall over and over, "God? I think you and I need to discuss the meaning of the phrase..."
"'Seems basically the same.'"
Hello, loving the story so far, I read the original World of Moral Reversal by Amahara and the serialized non-H version, also The Man of the House, and started Reverse World by dictation, Actually saw your comment there mentioning your story.
My only gripe with this is your dialogue formatting sometimes makes it hard to follow who is talking, It's commonly used that each action/dialogue goes into its own paragraph maybe this page can help you https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-format-dialogue-in-your-novel-or-short-story
anyway love the story keep the good work
Yeah, the style I had for some clients is different. Over time I switch it up. Not my preferred style, but enough people asked I tried changing it
I’ve read a few reverse worlds and am amazed by the fact this is the only one so far where the women are, in fact, humans and not single celled organisms that will deconstruct upon the lack of the titular ‘vitamin D’, nice (speculation so far). Sometimes I feel like the smut tag deserves to burn.
There will be smut eventually, so I felt like it should be included, especially given the source material.
I don’t have a problem with its inclusion, I actually think it’s more than justified in works that feature actual relationships. But the tag itself, on this site? Horny, horny, horny, every chapter. There are smut stories which focus on the tag which make sense, basically just po*n. But there are also stories -with- the smut tag, they have a habit of being ruined by it.
so in short dry sperm beer!
Well that's not really how the brain works, once it's damaged like how it was described, it's VERY difficult if not impossible to be repaired. The brains stems from, well, stem cells which I believe are basically unspecialised cells that turn into specialized cells like our heart and brain, which is why its fatal, as once those grow to their limit and can't go through mitosis again they start dying. Cells also can't go back to this stage so it's VERY vital, which is why you grow so fast at an early age and all, along with many other things. Although research is currently being done on these cells I believe it's still in the works and is very controversial. But this is a novel so it's alright lol I just wanted to share what I thought was interesting but my memory is a bit foggy on this stuff.
Memory is typically broken down into implicit and explicit memory. However, the nature of the soul as is constructed in this setting is that the soul is made up of memetic energy which involves its own physics. (Part of which will be explained around Book 2 Chapter 17) The existence of the six Monads (similar to quarks) is what mades up memes which is the very foundation of intelligent life as well as magic (Which is explained in greater detail at the start of book 2)
The transplantation of New Toshi's Soul into this body carries with it a great deal of New Toshi's Explicit memories. Original Toshi's soul is no longer present, but his brain did contain a large number of implicit memories that survived the damage. How to walk, for example, is an implicit memory. How to get your mouth to move to speak is an implicit memory. Fiction is an implicit memory, but most of the memories that form your personality originate from the explicit memory parts of your mind.
Those are gone.
God flat out reconstructed Original Toshi's brain, or New Toshi's soul wouldn't be able to do anything in there. When the damage brain sections were rebuilt, any information encoded there in the microtubials was reset. The correlation between the soul and the brain is that the brain is more like a CPU and the soul is a cloud storage. We're not talking a typical CPU, but a combination I/O device with a CPU and a localized High speed L2 Storage.
Original Toshi's L2 Storage was reset, but the some of the SSD storage survived intact. Most of the SSD had to be replaced and the contents were 'refilled' with New Toshi's OS, including a copy of the Implicit memories he had in his last life to fill in the gaps. This will result in the occasional "bleed through" of the original Toshi, which will become more apparent as the story unfolds.
And why yes, I do happen to over-research WAY TOO MUCH. Thanks for asking!
@TheEldritchGod ohf 😲
Meme energy? Undertood
@TheEldritchGod This is the first thing I’ve read from you, and I have to say.. *god* I love the overthinking details. Holy f*ck. It’s exactly how I think when going into stories. I can barely get anything published thinking about all this bullshit. How do you do it?
@Plantorsomething - It's a bit of a curse and a blessing. I've always had problems with things like names and faces, but when it comes to pattern recognition, it all jumps out at me.
@TheEldritchGod Coool