The reality...

The leaves of the trees fluttered as the cool morning breeze passed through them. The chirping of songbirds and the cawing of crows filled the air as birds soared across the sky, off to begin their daily routines.

On a path of damp soil, two men walked side by side, heading toward their fields to tend to them for the day.

One of them was Mark. The other, his older brother—John Goodman. 

John was five years his senior and the one who had taken care of "Mark" for most of his life.

Though Mark wasn't Mark Goodman anymore, the memories of his predecessor gave him a clear picture of the kind of man John Goodman was.

Those memories were useful. They gave him a map of this world and the people around him. But they didn't change who he was inside. He was still Mark Cain.

He didn't feel any real brotherly affection for John. The same went for Selina and the rest of the villagers. They were strangers wearing familiar faces.

And yet, he had helped Meg—not out of love or attachment. At least, not at first.

He helped her because he could. Because walking away would've left a bitter taste. 

Regret was something Mark hated, more than most things. He'd seen too much of it in his past life—both in others and in himself.

If something could be avoided—pain, guilt, mental strain—he would avoid it. 

Mark was many things, but a man who invited suffering onto himself for no reason was not one of them.

Mark remained by Meg's side until Selina eventually came to call him for breakfast before he went off to work.

Nothing dramatic happened in that span of time. 

But in those quiet minutes, his mind wandered—forced to confront things he hadn't had time to think about since waking up in this world.

First, there was the strange, lingering feeling he had for Meg… and her daughter, Mia. 

It wasn't affection. 

At least, not in the way that made sense to him. 

It was something leftover—something that clung to the edges of his mind like damp mist. A byproduct of taking on her trauma using his trait.

The raw emotions had dulled, sure. But they hadn't disappeared. 

They lingered in the background like distant memories that didn't belong to him—but were still his responsibility to carry.

And when he looked at Meg, those feelings surfaced, uninvited.

It was as if his trait refused to let him forget. 

Like it had bound him to the consequences of what he absorbed, reshaping his instincts so that the memories and emotions felt… familiar. 

Almost like they were his own, even when he knew they weren't.

He hadn't expected this.

He thought his regeneration trait would counterbalance the effects of his first trait—thought it would cleanse everything. 

It did, in part. He had taken on Meg's mental fatigue, and it hadn't slowed him down. But trauma… trauma was different.

Mental fatigue could be wiped away.

But trauma carved itself into the shape of a person—and he was starting to realize that even if his body returned to its peak, his mind might carry the scars longer than he thought.

After weighing the pros and cons of using both his traits—Debuff Transfer and Instant Regeneration—Mark found himself reflecting on his strange, almost seamless awakening in this new body.

What unsettled him wasn't the pain or the power. 

It was how natural everything felt. 

How easily his mind accepted the bizarre shift from one world to another. 

No panic. No existential crisis. Just... adaptation.

There was still a layer of detachment, of course. 

A part of him that remained aware these people weren't his people. That they had never truly spoken to him—Mark Cain—but to the boy who had once lived in this body. Mark Goodman.

And yet, when he talked to them, it didn't feel like he was acting. 

It felt effortless.

It was like talking to an online friend you'd known for years—someone whose thoughts, tone, and habits you were intimately familiar with—only now you were meeting them face to face for the first time. 

You knew them, even if it was your first time seeing them.

That was the power of inherited memory.

Through Mark Goodman's eyes, he had seen Selina laugh, Meg smile, and John Goodman work until his hands bled. 

He knew their expressions, their tones, their subtle gestures. Even if they weren't truly his memories, they were there, woven into the fabric of his mind.

And that same familiarity extended to John Goodman—his "older brother."

Funny how that worked. Mark Cain had been 25 in his previous life. But now, in this new body, he was 18. And John, being five years older than Mark Goodman, was 23.

So despite Mark Cain being older in soul and experience, he was now technically younger.

Not that he could ever explain this to John. Saying, "Hey, I'm not your brother. I'm actually a 25-year-old ex-salaryman who used to work in a hellish corporate job and quit to chase my dream of being a NEET"—yeah, no. 

That would go down about as well as confessing to murder.

So he played the part. Not because he had to. But because, disturbingly, it felt easy.

And that? That might have been the strangest part of all.