"We're just ordinary folks, caught up in this crazy world.
Rushing through life, not a moment to breathe.
We're no saints, so stray thoughts are inevitable.
Morals? Set those aside—let's talk profit instead."
The off-key singing echoed inside a beat-up electric scooter. Not exactly musical, but not bad enough to scare off dogs, either. The driver bobbed his head to his own tune, cruising along under the pale glow of a flickering streetlamp.
Ever seen the city at 1 a.m.? he thought to himself. I see it every night after work.
He figured this was it. Born to hustle, die as a cog in the machine. Just another anonymous worker bee grinding through life. Then—bam. Just as he crossed an empty intersection, a blinding fog light came screaming in from the left.
And with it, a bone-rattling blast of a truck horn—deep, guttural, like a bull's roar cranked up to eleven.
The light and sound hit him all at once. He barely had time to process what was happening. Still gripping the handlebars, he instinctively turned his head left.
Ah. Of course. The ultimate isekai delivery method—a big-ass truck.
Before he could do anything else, the truck slammed into his scooter like a sledgehammer into a landmine. The battery beneath him detonated, sending up a burst of sparks and fire.
The truck didn't stop.
They were out in the industrial outskirts of the city—no cameras, no traffic, not even a decent dashcam in sight. By the time emergency services arrived, the accident had already gone viral online.
The fire was out. All that remained was a charred scooter frame on the side of the road.
In the driver's seat, barely recognizable amid the soot and metal, was a single scorched mark—one last trace of a nameless man whose life had burned out without fanfare.
The only one who noticed he was gone? His supervisor—furious that someone had skipped work for three straight days without handing over the project files.
Eventually, a termination letter was mailed to an empty apartment—mortgage still hanging like a noose for the next thirty years. A few months later, when the bank repossessed the place, that letter was tossed in the trash.
No one cared the tenant had vanished.
---
// SYSTEM: TRANSFERRING CONSCIOUSNESS //
When our tragic, overworked soul opened his eyes again, he wasn't sitting in his scooter. There were no headlights, no screeching trucks.
In fact… he wasn't even sure there were windows anymore.
He felt like he was strapped into some high-tech massage chair, padded tight from every direction. Directly in front of him was a curved, translucent panel—his only view of the outside world.
He tried to turn his head, but it was difficult. His eyeballs worked fine, though. Limited field of vision, but enough to figure out he was sealed in a small, enclosed pod.
Outside the viewing panel… darkness. A vast expanse of stars stretched across the void, glittering like scattered diamonds.
Was it nighttime?
But then a massive planetary body drifted past—striped with bands of white and brown, a swirling red spot staring back like a cosmic eye.
Wait. That looked suspiciously like Jupiter.
Which meant… this wasn't just "nighttime." This was space.
Real, honest-to-God outer space.
He stared, slack-jawed, as rings and meteor belts zipped by. It was like watching a planetarium projection—except this was way too real. And way too close.
His brain jumped to the last thing he remembered: headlights. The truck. The crash.
This? This felt like a sequel.
Tentatively, he tried to move. His limbs were buried under padding, but not paralyzed. With some effort, he wriggled his right arm free and raised it to his face.
The arm was chubby. Soft. Skin so smooth it practically glowed.
No way this belonged to a sleep-deprived, underpaid adult.
In fact… these proportions didn't belong to an adult at all.
"What the hell? I've been reborn?! Did I transmigrate? Or is this… some kind of body possession thing?"
No extra memories popped up. No cheat skills. No glowing system screens. Just confusion.
Judging from the view outside, this wasn't a fantasy world or a digital dimension. Looked like… space. Deep space. And if that was Jupiter… then maybe he was still in the solar system?
A few moments later, another planet floated by—this one wrapped in majestic rings.
"Saturn," he guessed. "Which means I'm moving toward Earth… or the sun."
He glanced around. No steering controls. No dashboard. Not even a joystick. Whatever this pod was, it didn't seem pilotable. Either it was flying itself—or gravity was doing the job.
Option A meant he was going home.
Option B… meant he was heading into the sun.
Fantastic. Just got reincarnated, and now I'm about to get incinerated.
Maybe this was the sci-fi version of crossing the River Styx.
With a resigned sigh, he stopped thinking about how to escape. There wasn't much he could do anyway. The pod was cramped, techless, and absolutely not interactive.
Was this… one of those futuristic space funerals? Like burying someone at sea during the age of exploration—except now we launched corpses into orbit?
Was he riding a space coffin?
Or… was this a Saiyan pod?
That thought made him smirk. He imagined reaching behind to check for a monkey tail—then realized he couldn't move enough to confirm.
"Man, Dragon Ball really was a product of its time," he mused. "Send a baby to conquer Earth? Dude probably couldn't conquer a bottle of formula."
He rolled his eyes, picturing some evil overlord sending his daughter to fight heroes. A one-way ticket to rebellion.
But his sarcasm was interrupted when the pod shifted. Outside the viewing panel, a beautiful blue planet appeared—half shrouded in night.
The dark side glimmered faintly with lights. Artificial ones.
So, civilization still existed. That was a good sign. No cavemen. No medieval witch-hunters. Looked like he was landing in a modern world.
As the pod began its descent, it passed by orbiting satellites, blinking steadily in the dark. He was too busy ranting internally to reflect on his identity—or lack thereof.
Then the pod hit the atmosphere.
Flames licked across the viewport as the hull superheated, but the interior remained cool and still. No turbulence. No G-force. Just a smooth, eerily calm ride.
This thing was way beyond Earth tech. If it wasn't alien, it was at least next-gen alien-adjacent.
Or maybe it really was just a coffin.
Then… who was he?
He braced himself for the worst. What if this was Planet of the Apes? A bunch of hyper-intelligent chimps pulling him from his pod?
Please no monkey men. Please no monkey men.
To his relief, what greeted him wasn't simians—but a group of burly guys in snow-white parkas, speaking in thick Russian.
The pod had landed in the middle of a snowstorm. Somewhere remote. Cold as hell.
He opened his mouth to speak—maybe throw out a "Привет, товарищ"—but what came out was…
"Waaah!"
A baby's cry.
Yep. No mistaking it now. Short limbs. Chubby body. Tiny lungs.
He hadn't just reincarnated.
He'd been reborn.
As a literal baby.
In Siberia.
In the snow.
Fantastic.