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She is twenty-seven years old, going to bed and mildly dreading the coming Monday workload, taking some time to read a chapter from her favorite stories before falling asleep.
She is twenty-seven seconds old, barely able to move as she looks blearily up at a woman with kind eyes and blue hair that she has never seen before.
What the hell, she thinks.
The OB/GYN calls the woman Kazama-san. The man who tearfully rushes into the room and embraces her calls her Naoko. And apparently, the newborn baby realizes, she is meant to call her Mama.
Her new name is Kazama Akane, daughter of Kazama Naoko and Kazama Kaoru. She’s passed around a lot and her weak baby eyes have a very hard time making sense of anything, but her ears seem to be fine and she manages to discern that it’s currently fall in the year 1978.
She was a spring baby last go around, she thinks belatedly as Kaoru rocks her gently in his arms. She’ll have to get used to a whole different birthday. Also, it’s 1978??? How did she end up getting reincarnated over forty years in the past?
Though, she’s not quite certain that this is the past. For one, when she catches a fuzzy glimpse of herself in a mirror, she realizes that her hair is the same dark blue shade as Naoko’s, and Kaoru has bright red eyes that they say are just like Akane’s. Which means either dying babies’ hair is a thing, or she’s in some sort of world where colored hair is just…normal.
Being a baby kind of sucks. She wasn’t even that old when she died—how did she die? She can’t remember—and the thought of going through puberty a second time is already making her extremely annoyed.
Oh well, better make the most of it. As soon as she’s able to crawl she starts pulling books from the shelves in the Kazamas’ little apartment—they think she’s merely mimicking them when she turns the pages and often try to replace the books with stuffed animals, to her chagrin.
Eventually her stupid baby vocal chords develop enough where she’s able to start speaking though, and boy does she get some satisfaction at seeing their jaws drop when her first words at ten months of age are “I’m going to read this now.”
The Kazamas’ are not boastful people, so the idea that their infant is some sort of a supergenius doesn’t really change much for them. She appreciates that. They encourage her in quiet ways, taking her to the library as often as possible, buying her notebooks that she starts filling with information once her fingers are strong enough to hold a pencil.
She learns that this universe is pretty much identical to the one she left behind—all the correct players are here, the right presidents and prime ministers. Though The internet of her own youth is very far off, which is a bit annoying when she wants to look up something specific. The library will have to be sufficient enough for now, as will snatching the newspaper off the table in the mornings.
She learns that colored hair and eyes are indeed normal in this universe, even though the majority of the population has what she considers “normal” coloration. She’s not all that interested in genetics, but she wonders if everyone who dies is sent to this universe, or if it’s just her. Why does she even have her old memories?
There is a strange sort of middle ground you tread when you are raised believing in a higher plane of existence after death and yet you are still taught to honor the ghosts of ancestors past, who visit the earth from time to time. Perhaps it’s different for children who aren’t raised in multiple cultures, but she’s never found it too much of a challenge to handle.
Reincarnation though, that was always an interesting idea. Her family isn’t Buddhist, but she’d learned of the concepts, wondered about the possibility of past lives.
It’s strange to think that the life in which she learned those things is now a past life.
This new life isn’t so bad. Her parents let her read almost anything she wants, and if she remembers correctly there’s tons of art that will be coming out—it’ll be interesting to experience One Piece as it originally was released, she thinks. A lot of her favorite series were released in the 2010s though, which means it’ll be a while before she gets to read them again.
Her elementary school teachers think she’s strange, trying to encourage her to socialize more, but if she’s being honest it’s really hard to relate to six year olds when you’re actually in your thirties inside. She much prefers sitting by the tree during lunch with a thick book, unbothered by the chaos around her.
A young boy’s voice reaches her ears. “What are you reading?”
She turns a page without looking up. “Journey to the West.”
“Cool. What’s happening in it?”
Well that’s new. No one’s ever cared to ask before. Still not looking, she tells him about the story, about her thoughts on the metaphors for the human will and mind, and this kid…doesn’t get bored. He answers back, he asks more questions…it’s nice.
“What’s your name, by the way?” He asks.
“Kazama Akane.” It took some time to get used to telling people that. She knows that it’s supposed to be her name, but it still feels like the name of someone she replaced.
“Nice to meet you, Akane! I’m Ishigami Byakuya!”
Her head snaps up. In front of her is a young boy with white hair tipped with black, warm brown eyes and a blinding bright smile.
“Oh, there you are!” He giggles. “Your eyes are cool, they’re like little red suns!”
Ishigami Byakuya. Adopted father of Ishigami Senku, the protagonist of a 2017 manga called Dr. Stone.
A protagonist who has red eyes.
Eyes like Akane’s.
This. Is not good.
Admittedly, suddenly screaming and running away from Byakuya was…probably not the most mature way to react to the situation. But can you blame her? Aside from the inherent weirdness of realizing she’s been reincarnated into the setting of a shonen manga, she’s grappling with some pretty heavy facts right now.
The biological mother of Ishigami Senku has only ever been mentioned as a side note to his story. She was best friends with Ishigami Byakuya. She had Senku on January 4, 2004. She died when he was two years old.
She died when he was two years old.
It is 1986.
The girl called Akane has less than 21 years to live.
She tries to reason that maybe she isn’t meant to take on the role of Senku’s mother, maybe it’s just a coincidence that Byakuya met her, maybe there’s another red-eyed woman or a green-haired girl somewhere waiting to befriend him in the future.
But red eyes occur in less than 1% of Japan’s population.
She bursts into tears when she gets home, the weight of the universe suddenly pressing in all around her.
She tries to avoid him. Ishigami Byakuya, the boy who will become a father as soon as she stops being a mother. Maybe she can still hold out, maybe if she takes herself out of the story someone else will fill that nameless, doomed role of “protagonist’s mother” instead.
But he is annoyingly persistent, even when she snaps at him or calls him rude names. His sweet, earnest nature wears away at the iron cage of her heart, and she realizes she was far lonelier than she originally thought she’d been.
So this is it, huh. She thinks as she watches Byakuya trying to catch a butterfly for her—a red one, to match her crimson eyes that she will pass on to the hero of humanity. I’m going to die again.
Will it hurt? Will she be taken out of the story by illness, or by accident? Will Byakuya, sweet, gentle, goofy Byakuya, witness it?
Will anyone know what happened to her? Who she was?
Bitterness settles into her heart, even as she laughs at the dumb face Byakuya makes when the butterfly lands on his nose.
Years pass. Byakuya is an ever present force in her life, always cracking jokes and talking about some nonsense or whatever. She wants to hate him, to despise what this friendship, this connection, this razor thin string of fate between them will do to her, cutting off her air while he becomes the beloved parent, the powerful patriarch, the legendary character she once admired on the manga page. But she can’t. How could anyone hate Ishigami Byakuya?
Her adolescence is defined by a surly personality and a careless attitude. Her parents are confused at the change in her personality, her lack of interest in academics despite being clearly brilliant, and her unwillingness to say what her plans are for the future.
Why plan for a future you’re not going to have, for a life no one is going to care about?
But then Byakuya nervously asks her what university she’s planning on going to and she realizes she can’t just slip away into the river of fate.
Senku, the protagonist, the hero…he will still be a baby, a two year old, before she’s written out of the story. He will need a parent who has enough money to provide for him, until Byakuya can take him.
And so she stares at the paper, and writes down some choices for a university.
It isn’t Byakuya or Senku’s fault that she will leave them. So if she has to be a dead anime mom, she’s going to be the best goddamned dead anime mom she can be.
Kazama Kaoru dies when his daughter is 18, and the only thing she can think of is that, oh yeah…Senku didn’t have grandparents, at least, none mentioned.
She starts to pull away from Naoko, who only looks at her with a sad expression every time she declines to spend time with her.
It’s better this way. It’ll hurt less when she’s gone. The girl called Akane is grateful to the Kazamas, but like her they are props in Senku’s story, filling space where there was none.
She goes to university, gets a job as a librarian. She spends her days reading of protagonists, of their epic journeys, so often without any parents or siblings.
Maybe in another life she would have been born as the heroine. But not this one.
Byakuya is studying robotics, of course, and in grad school starts doing some teaching on the side.
He asks her why she only saves up all her money rather than spending it on anything nice. It’s meant for him, for Senku, she thinks, but she doesn’t tell him that.
She allows him to pester her into buying a high quality croissant for herself.
It’s nice.
She starts buying herself a new small treat every month or so. If she’s going to die in less than ten years she should at least try to enjoy chocolate pinwheels while she still can.
Something is off.
It’s 2003 now, and the clock is ticking down to when Senku is supposed to have been conceived, according to her calculations. But she has yet to meet anyone who could be the Father.
Has she ruined something? Was she supposed to start dating in high school or college? Did she pass by the Father at work, or in the coffee shop?
She was never interested in men (or women, or anyone) in her past life, but could that lack of interest have doomed the world before it began? Has she taken Senku out of the story, has she condemned billions of people to be trapped in stone for eternity? Or is she freed from the narrative, has she cut herself loose from the death she thought she was destined for?
By April first she’s had enough. The world needs Ishigami Senku, not Kazama Akane. She steels herself, puts on the nicest looking dress she owns, and heads out to the nearest bar.
Within an hour she sees him. A man with white hair tipped with green.
The Father.
He spots her across the bar and smiles. She forces herself to smile back, to play with her hair and walk up to him with her hips swaying from side to side.
They talk for a bit. He invites her to his place. She giggles—it sounds strange coming from her mouth—and agrees.
She’s never actually done this before, not in this life or the last. She’s not repulsed by the idea, but it’s not exactly something she feels any enthusiasm about.
But her hands are barely on his waist before he suddenly pulls away, a stricken look on his face.
“I’m sorry,” he says, voice anguished in a way she’s never heard before. “I can’t do this to you.”
She stares into his eyes and a realization takes hold.
He knows too.
His name in this life is Shirayama Gaku. He’s known the role he’s meant to play from the moment he spotted himself in a mirror.
They don’t talk about their lives here though. No, they spend the night telling each other about their old lives, the people they once were.
She realizes with shame that she’d tried not to think of him as a person before now. That he was always the Father to her, a nameless, faceless entity only meant to push her further down the path of fate. Because he doesn’t die canonically. He’s just…not in the story. Which means he has a chance, to live. Perhaps he’s meant to simply do the deed and then go off on his own, never even knowing about the boy carrying his genes who will save the world.
He says he doesn’t want her to die. They don’t know if there’s another life after this one—perhaps what awaits her once Senku turns two is pure oblivion. Maybe this is the only second chance she’s going to get.
But she doesn’t want the world to die either. “If it’s not Senku,” she says quietly. “It’ll be Xeno.” And they both know what kind of a person he is.
“You’re still a person,” the man called Gaku says, with a sadness that seems to envelop him entirely. “You still deserve to live.”
She thinks on that for a while. Then, she makes a decision.
“I want to know him,” she says. “I want him to know me.” Maybe this can be different. Maybe they still have a chance. After all, they were never meant to have this conversation, were they? And yet here they are now.
They’re going to try.
Naoko and Byakuya are, to say the least, absolutely dumbfounded by Akane’s sudden marriage to a man she’s only just met. The idea that it’s because she got pregnant is even more astounding to them—both are well aware of Akane’s indifference towards anything romantic or sexual.
But Gaku asserts that he intends on taking care of her, and they eventually come around to him. He’s kind, and gentle, and even though there’s no romance in the equation Akane finds herself being comforted by his presence, especially since he can commiserate with her over the fact that their favorite movies aren’t even a wisp of thought yet.
The pregnancy is…fine. It’s weird, and at times unpleasant, but it’s not as horrific as she used to imagine it as a teenager.
She starts telling herself that it’s different. Gaku is here, if she gets sick or whatever he’s got the funds, if there’s an accident…he and Byakuya are a good enough tag team that things will smooth over quickly. He’ll make sure she’s remembered.
The clock is ticking, and she tunes it out in favor of enjoying her time with her friends. She even starts talking to her mother again—things are starting to look up.
But then one week, as she’s nearing the start of the third trimester, Gaku starts acting weird, saying he has a bad feeling about something.
And one night, he wakes her up and calls her by her name—not Akane, but her original name, from the last life, and her eyes widen.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m so, so sorry.”
He closes his eyes and does not wake up.
A sudden brain hemorrhage.
He was perfectly healthy right up until then.
Akane holds Byakuya’s hand at the funeral and does not cry.
So this is what happens when you try to defy fate.
She’s listless for a month, forgetting to take care of herself. Forgetting to take care of Senku.
When she realizes this, she finds herself wandering back to the Kazama house, the one Akane grew up in. Naoko opens the door and envelops her in warm, strong arms as Akane cries.
“I’m going to die nameless,” she tells her. “I’m no one, not in this life, not in this world.”
Naoko strokes her hair and kisses her forehead.
“You’re not no one,” she says. “You’re my daughter.”
And Akane realizes that Naoko is also a mother that no one will remember.
Except her.
“Mama,” she murmurs. “Mama, Mama, Mama…”
“Shhh, I’ve got you,” Naoko says, rocking her back and forth. “I’ve got you, love.”
Ishigami Senku is born a little small, a little premature. He’s got his mother’s red eyes and his father’s pale hair, and his face is all tiny and scrunched up and…kind of ugly.
His legal name right now is Shirayama Senku, but Akane keeps thinking of him as Byakuya’s. Seeing Senku in his arms, it’s like they’re meant to be together. Soulmates. He was born to be a father, Senku was born to be his son.
Byakuya moves in to help with raising Senku, making up for Gaku’s absence. It’s exhausting even with two people, so Naoko moves in to help out too.
For a while, he’s just Senku, a future protagonist in the making. But then one day when Akane has finished feeding him he looks up at her and burbles out, “Ma.”
Akane freezes.
“Oh,” she says. “That’s me, isn’t it?”
“Ma.”
Senku—no, her son, yawns and snuggles into her chest like that’s where he wants to be forever.
Tears fall onto his forehead and she realizes she will only get a little over one more year with him.
Naoko passes away peacefully sometime later. Akane takes comfort in the fact that she’ll join her mother soon.
Senku is growing, progressing to walking and talking and asking questions. Akane reads to him, as much as she can, and takes him on every possible excursion to the museum and aquarium and pretty much everywhere you can legally bring a toddler, with Byakuya in tow. She even starts a video diary, telling Byakuya it’s so they can remember these early years together. So he’ll know her.
Byakuya looks momentarily confused at her choice of words, but lets the moment pass.
Senku’s second birthday arrives, and Akane braces herself. Any day now, between now and January 4, 2007, she will die.
So every day she chooses something new and exciting to do, something her past self or even her childhood self as Akane would never do.
To her surprise, the days keep passing, and the photo albums get thicker and thicker. She wonders if she’s actually going to live.
Then one day, she wakes up and she feels it. The sense that something is coming, something powerful, inescapable.
Just like what Gaku felt.
She asks Byakuya to take the week off from work, and they take Senku to the observatory for New Year’s Eve.
She wakes up when it’s still dark on New Year’s Day. Walking over to Senku’s room, she presses a kiss to his forehead before going to the living room, where to her surprise Byakuya is waiting with two cups of tea.
“Thought we could watch the sunrise together,” he says, and Akane’s heart fills with fondness.
“Sorry,” she murmurs as she sips the tea. “But I don’t think I’m going to make it.”
Byakuya puts an arm around her. “I know.”
She doesn’t ask how. Byakuya’s smarter than she ever gave him credit for anyway.
“Promise me he’ll know who I am?” She says, setting down the empty cup.
Byakuya nudges her forehead with his own. “I promise.”
She trusts him. Maybe it’ll never be mentioned in the pages of a book, but she’ll have still existed. She’ll have still been a person.
Akane closes her eyes as she feels a faint twinge in her skull.
I’m glad that I got to know you.