The sound of heavy rain mixing with blood filled the air as old sneakers were getting torn up on rocky asphalt and metal pipes clanged together with butterfly knives.

For a moment I thought back to when my sister Suzuki and I would play basketball together. We weren't kids playing with a ball anymore though, and we certainly weren't playing that kind of game.

“Suzuki!” I yelled out her name as one of the large men she was fighting grabbed onto me, somehow getting past her. I was small, and no fighter. In other words, I was her only weakness.

She hurled a pipe across the way and slammed it into the man's head knocking him out cold. I was half his size, so it was no wonder I wasn't a good meat shield. Still, it was an impressive throw.

With only her bare hands she fought off all 8 of the other guys in the gang and left. Most were just hanging on to life by a thread. Somehow she always managed to do that to them without ever actually killing them. Well… There was one time that she killed someone.

It worried me that we were getting attacked so close to home. I remember thinking that it felt like we were getting set up, or like something wasn't right, but I kept my thoughts to myself.

My sister climbed back onto her bike, and as she revved the engine it roared with an explosion that sent the whole street into flames. That was the last time I saw her… We had a closed casket funeral…

…

4 years later and I was 16. After Suzuki died I committed my brain to my studies and to strategy games, shutting myself off from everything. I was never any good at sports or gym class anyway. Somewhere along the way I became a “Phenomenon.” Able to win tournaments and crush any opponent in any strategy game I played. Some people went on to say that I was the only reason global scale strategy games ever even had a presence in the esports scene.

It was fun, but it was just an escape. I think the only person that ever managed to recover from my sister's death was my mom, she was the strongest of the three of us. She was able to move on…

On the fourth anniversary of her passing, I found myself walking down the street she was on all that time past. It was all cleaned up, nice houses and gardens lined the street, and there was a brand new basketball court sitting there next to a park. It was so different, but that didn't stop the memories from flashing through my mind.

I turned down the alley where the fight had started, and the last thing I remember was feeling the crack of a metal pipe against the back of my head. My vision went black before I hit the ground, and although I could loosely feel the impact, there was no pain.

At first I thought I was just knocked out, but when I opened my eyes to see a grassy field and a bright shining light I knew it was over. ‘Mom… I hope you can move on from this too…’

…

I don't remember anything from what happened next. My memory was almost blank, leaving me with only fragments to piece together what had happened. I was reincarnated. Before I knew it I was already approaching the age I was when I first died. The days went by slow, but the years seemed to pass without me even realizing it. 

Suddenly I was 14 for the second time, but unlike my first life where I had everything I could ever want, in this new life I was given nothing. In my first life I was called a prodigy, but in my new life I was so disappointing my family hid my existence for two whole years. I ended up being born to a noble family that would sooner kill me than let it be discovered I was weak. 

This is the story of that life. My new life. The life of the girl they call Siya.