Everyone Panics. I Don’t.

Hospitals have a very specific vibe.

Beeping machines. Whispered conversations. The kind of silence that screams something went wrong. I knew this because I was currently lying in a bed surrounded by that exact atmosphere—white walls, stiff sheets, and a nurse who kept looking at me like I might suddenly combust.

Honestly? Rude.

I was busy having an internal meeting.

Agenda:

I died.

I woke up as a boy.

This body is… unfairly attractive.

Why is everyone so tense?

The door opened.

Cue dramatic entrance.

A woman rushed in first, eyes red, hair messy, panic radiating off her like heat. A man followed, face tight, jaw clenched like he was holding his sanity together with sheer willpower.

Ah.

Parents.

They froze when they saw me awake.

“Oh my god—” the woman gasped and crossed the room in three steps, grabbing my hands like I was about to disappear. “Alex—baby—can you hear me?”

Alex.

Good to know.

I looked at her. Then at the man. Then back at her.

“Yes,” I said calmly. “I’m not deaf.”

She burst into tears.

The man let out a breath like he’d been holding it since birth.

“We thought—” he started, then stopped, because apparently sentences were optional during emotional breakdowns.

I blinked.

Okay. So. New family. Deep emotional bonds. Near-death trauma.

I waited for something to stir inside me.

Nothing did.

I felt… neutral. Like I’d accidentally wandered into someone else’s family reunion.

The woman cupped my face, searching my eyes desperately. “Do you remember us?”

Ah. The classic question.

I considered lying dramatically. Or reassuring her. Or crying.

Instead, I shrugged.

“Kind of?”

Wrong answer.

Her face went pale. The man stiffened.

“What do you mean, kind of?” he asked carefully.

I tilted my head. “I know you’re important. Emotionally. I just… can’t access the details.”

That was true. Technically. Just not in the way they thought.

A doctor entered at the worst possible moment, clipboard in hand, face set to professional concern. He asked me questions—name, age, date, location.

I answered correctly.

Then he asked, “Do you remember the incident?”

I thought about rain. Screams. A bus.

I smiled politely.

“Nope.”

He nodded slowly, like he’d expected that.

After a long explanation filled with words meant to sound comforting, he finally landed on the diagnosis:

“Selective retrograde amnesia,” he said. “Some memories—especially emotional or traumatic ones—are hazy or inaccessible. It may improve with time.”

My parents looked like the floor had disappeared beneath them.

My siblings—yes, siblings, two of them, both hovering near the door—looked equally horrified.

I, on the other hand, thought:

Cool. A medically approved excuse.

The doctor continued, “Your personality might also seem… slightly altered. This is normal.”

Slightly.

If only he knew.

That night, after everyone left—after the crying, the whispered promises, the frantic phone calls—I was finally alone.

That’s when it happened.

The memories came in waves.

Not violently. Not painfully.

Like someone slowly unlocking a file.

This boy—Alex—had lived a quiet life. Average student. Average presence. Kind, forgettable, unambitious. Loved by his family in a soft, unquestioning way.

No enemies. No grand dreams.

No pressure.

I absorbed it all calmly, like reading someone else’s autobiography.

By the time the nurse checked in again, I understood everything.

This world.

This family.

This body.

I lay back on the bed, staring at the ceiling.

Two lives.

Same energy.

One conclusion.

If the universe had gone through all this effort to reincarnate me—