Rain. Tokyo special. Monsoon season, apparently, was a year-round event in my personal hellscape. Or maybe it was just the universe’s way of saying, “Welcome back to the land of the living, loser! Enjoy the damp.” Because, yeah, turns out death wasn’t the great escape I’d been fantasizing about for, oh, the better part of a decade. Instead, it was more like a… system reboot. A cosmic Ctrl+Alt+Del, except instead of getting back to my desktop, I’d been dumped back into… this.


    This… crib-adjacent monstrosity. Seriously, calling it a crib was like calling the Taj Mahal a “house.” It was less a baby bed and more a gilded, silk-lined sensory deprivation chamber for infants of the obscenely wealthy. So soft, so plush, so utterly, ridiculously unnecessary. My old futon was probably staging a protest in afterlife-futon-heaven, muttering about class warfare and the injustice of it all. And the warmth. Not the sweaty, suffocating warmth of my NEET-cave apartment, but a decadent, enveloping heat that felt like being hugged by a thousand cashmere blankets stuffed with unicorn down. Okay, maybe I was exaggerating. Slightly. But still, ridiculously comfortable. Alarmingly comfortable, even. Like the universe was actively trying to lull me into a false sense of security before dropping the other shoe. Which, knowing my luck, was probably a size seventeen steel-toed boot filled with existential dread.


    Because let’s be real, my life hadn’t exactly been a laugh riot before the whole “soul unexpectedly deleted” incident. Thirty-four years of glorious underachievement, culminating in homelessness, joblessness, and the distinct aroma of unwashed sweatpants clinging to my very being. Highlight reel included: the “Foreskin Boy” incident (still shuddering), the decade-long NEET streak (personal best, sadly), and, of course, missing my own parents’ funeral because, well, priorities. Masturbating to mosaic-free loli videos during a funeral. Yeah, that’s going on the epitaph. “Here Lies Hiroki: His Life Was a Series of Poor Choices, Starting With This One.”


    So, death. Yeah, still wrapping my head around that. One minute, coding, debugging, wrestling with lines of code that seemed actively sentient and malicious. Next minute, chest implosion, vision tunnel visioning, and then… the error message. FATAL_SYSTEM_ERROR: SOUL_UNEXPECTEDLY_DELETED. It was almost poetic, in a darkly ironic, “universe hates you” kind of way. My soul, apparently, was just another bug in the system. And the fix? Reincarnation. As a baby. In… well, I was still working on the “where” and “what the hell” parts of that equation.


    But if this was death… and reincarnation… and whatever the hell this silk-swathed sensory overload chamber was supposed to be… was it heaven? Hell? Some kind of cosmic daycare center for souls that screwed up spectacularly in their first playthrough? Because if this was heaven, it was seriously overdesigned. Too much gold, too much fluff, too many goddamn cherubs painted on the ceiling looking down with vaguely judgmental expressions. Give me a high-speed internet connection, an endless supply of energy drinks, and a lifetime subscription to all the streaming services, that’s my idea of paradise. Hell, on the other hand… maybe this was hell. Reborn as a baby, completely helpless, covered in spit-up and goo, dependent on giant, impossibly beautiful people for survival? Yeah, that sounded about right for my karmic payback. Eternal babyhood. The ultimate NEET nightmare.


    My eyelids, finally, after what felt like an internal wrestling match with gravity and inertia, creaked open. Light. Golden, annoyingly cheerful, aggressively opulent light. Pouring in through… windows. Not just windows, windows. Arched, towering, crystal-paned monstrosities that looked like they’d been ripped straight out of a goddamn fairytale. Windows so big, so pristine, so utterly, ridiculously window-y, they practically screamed “WE ARE RICH AND YOU ARE STARING AT OUR WINDOWS, PEASANT!” And the ceiling. Oh god, the ceiling. I’d already mentioned the ceiling, hadn’t I? But it deserved another mention. And maybe another. And possibly a support group for souls traumatized by excessive gold leaf. Painted. Mythological. Dragons, griffins, winged dudes flexing their celestial biceps… It was like a Renaissance painting vomited directly onto the vaulted expanse above me. In a good way. A terrifyingly, overwhelmingly, ridiculously good way.


    And then, the tapestries. Because apparently, no self-respecting opulent baby prison was complete without wall-sized woven narratives depicting scenes of medieval badassery. Not posters of anime waifus, not faded band posters, not even motivational cat memes. No, tapestries. Silk and gold, depicting knights in shining armor doing knightly things, dragons breathing fire and generally being dramatic, and nobles in outfits that looked like they weighed more than I did. Historical reenactment cosplay on steroids, funded by a small nation’s GDP. My Tokyo apartment, with its peeling wallpaper and existential grime, was starting to look like a minimalist zen garden in comparison. A minimalist zen garden of despair, but still.Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.


    Panic. Boom. There it was. The inevitable wave of existential dread, crashing over me like a rogue tsunami of “what the actual hell is going on?!” Where was I? What was this place? Was this some kind of elaborate, afterlife-themed escape room gone horribly, hilariously wrong? Some cosmic prank orchestrated by bored deities with a penchant for irony? Because if so, universe, you were seriously nailing the comedic timing. Dark comedy, granted, but still.


    But even as the panic threatened to overwhelm my newly reborn, ridiculously undersized nervous system, a weird undercurrent of… something else. Luxury. Yeah, that was the word. Obscene, unapologetic, aggressively in-your-face luxury. Silk, gold, crystal, tapestries… It was sensory overload, a billionaire’s fever dream, a visual and tactile assault of pure, unadulterated richness. And me, Hiroki Sato, former NEET extraordinaire, connoisseur of instant ramen and existential angst, was smack-dab in the middle of it. Lying in a crib that probably had a higher net worth than most developing nations. And it was… weirdly… comfortable. Disturbingly comfortable. Like maybe, just maybe, I could actually get used to this whole “reincarnated noble baby” thing. Maybe. Probably not. But a guy could dream, right? Even a pathetic, reincarnated, error-code-surviving, accidentally noble ex-NEET like me. Dream of not screwing it all up. Again. For once. Maybe. Probably not. But hey, free crib. And the rain, muffled by the probably-soundproofed-with-unicorn-tears windows, actually sounded… kind of nice. Small victories, people. Small victories.


    Then, the giants loomed. Because of course, there were giants. Beautiful giants, naturally. A woman, blonde hair that shimmered like actual, honest-to-god spun gold, eyes the color of sapphires, because subtlety was apparently a banned word in this dimension. And a man, jawline that could cut diamonds, regal bearing that could make a king feel inadequate, eyes that radiated both surprising kindness and… well, royalty. Definitely royalty. Dressed in velvet and lace and enough goddamn jewels to make a pawn shop owner spontaneously combust with avarice. Were these… my new parents? Seriously? Had I accidentally wandered onto the set of some ridiculously overfunded fantasy movie? Or, you know, into a goddamn eroge? Because this whole situation was starting to feel very eroge-y. Harem flags, anyone? Please tell me there weren''t harem flags. I was way too out of shape for a harem. Emotionally and physically.


    “He’s awake!” The woman breathed, her voice like… wind chimes, yes, but also like liquid moonlight and unicorn sighs and all other ridiculously over-the-top similes you could possibly imagine. Musical, joyful, absurdly cheerful, and laced with a maternal warmth that actually made my chest clench. Maternal. Damn it. Don’t get attached, Hiroki-Leonhardt-whatever-the-hell-I-was-now. Don’t get attached. It was probably a trap. A cosmic bait-and-switch. But still… she reached down, graceful as a goddamn swan in slow motion, and scooped me up. Cradled me. Baby-me. Like I was… precious. Like I actually mattered. Like I wasn''t just a walking, talking, breathing embodiment of failure and regret. Her touch… soft. Unbelievably, ridiculously, offensively soft. Like a cloud made of kittens and unicorn tears and… Okay, I was officially running out of ridiculously opulent similes. And… yeah, maternal. Damn it again. That feeling. That warmth. That… connection. It was dangerous. Way too dangerous for a cynical, jaded, reincarnated ex-NEET like me.


    “Indeed,” the man chuckled, voice like rolling thunder, but somehow… gentle thunder? Warm thunder? Reassuring thunder? Noble thunder, definitely. “Welcome to the world, Leonhardt Aurelius von Granzreich.”


    Leonhardt Aurelius von Granzreich. Seriously? That name. It sounded like it belonged on a goddamn perfume bottle, or maybe a brand of ridiculously overpriced artisanal cheese. Noble. So, so noble. Too noble, even. Like they were actively trying to compensate for something. Maybe the fact that I was, you know, a reincarnated NEET with a soul that had been error-deleted by the cosmic operating system. Leonhardt. Granzreich. Me. Baby-me. Apparently. Reincarnated. Noble. Isekai’d. Error-code-survivor. Accidental aristocrat. Whatever the hell you wanted to call it, it was officially, completely, utterly, hilariously, and probably tragically, my new reality. And I was, without a shadow of a doubt, in way, way over my head. But hey, at least the rain, muffled by the unicorn-tear-proof windows, actually sounded… almost… peaceful. Small victories, people. Small victories. Even for a reincarnated, accidentally royal, perpetually screw-up ex-NEET like me. Maybe, just maybe, this time… I wouldn’t completely fail. Maybe. Don''t hold your breath. But hey, free crib. And no more soul-crushing error messages. Yet. Give it time. I was sure the universe was just warming up.