“It… It’s been a long time, young lord.”

“Yep, sure has.”

“Can I ask… to what do I owe this visit?”

“You’re being cold! Colder than usual.”

“…”

“Right, well, I hadn’t seen you in a while, so I wanted to see what happened to you.”

“… How did you know I’d be here?”

“Hah… I asked Teacher about where you were, but he didn’t know. Father also refused to talk. That idiot. I don’t know why he didn’t send me to get you…”

“So you broke into your father’s things, and found out where my last mission was…? If that’s all, I would hope that you would leave.”

“What’s with you? A boy travels from far away to rescue you from peril, and you want to send me away?”

“… As you can see, I am not in peril.”

“Was it that old man? I can tell he’s crazy strong. Is he keeping you here?”

“He is unrelated. I am merely enjoying his hospitality for the week.

“Hey, why are you so docile? Normally you would have scolded me for following you all the way out here. And what’s with that soft voice? Like you think I’m gonna bite you.”

“I’m sorry young lord—”

“And that! You never apologize! What’d they do to you?”

“… Perhaps it’s best if you leave.”

“I can bring an army.”

“An army won’t stop him.”

“So there is a guy… I’ll get that bastard, and—”

“You can’t stop him.”

“… Hey, what the hell did this guy do to you?”

“The same he would do to you. So please—”

“Enough!”

“...”

“What happened to you?”

“I… I don’t… I can’t talk about it…”

“...”

“I’m sorry…”

“I never thought I’d see you cry.”

“It’s… I can’t do anything… Even if I ran, he can find me, and do terrible things to me… I can’t fight back… I can’t even resist him…”

“Hey, hey... don’t worry…”

“…”

“I’ve got this… I’ll go find him, and kill him,”

“Wait… don’t do anything stupid!”

“Hey, now that’s more like it, haha.”

“Listen to me!”

“Look, I’m going to go beat the shit out of the asshole that fucked with you, ok? I’m going now.”

“OK... ok…? That word… W-wait!”

“What is it this time?”

“I think… he’s like you.”

“Like me?”

“Yes. A reincarnator.”

Author Notes:

So I'm alive. Sorta, kinda. I've been distracted, writing between a chapter for this story, and another. I had this scene in my head, so I ended up pushing Chapter 34 to 35, and inserting this here. I was intentionally vague with what is going on here, wanting to plant seeds for future plot threads.

With some deductive reasoning, you could probably figure out who is who, but let's just leave it at that.

Anyways, I haven't really written much lately. Like I said, I swapped between writing a new chapter for this story, and my other story, "So I'm an NPC Now?", but I haven't had the motivation to write very much. Instead I've been playing Mount and Blade, and Civ 5 for the last few days, in various other things for the last few weeks.

That all being said, I've been wanting to publish a novel for quite some time, but for one reason or another, I never got around to it. So I thought, "What if I publish this story?"

Chapter 1 to 25 is of adequate length and content to release as a single volume. With some editing and adding additional content to flesh out some of the more rushed developments, I thought it could be pretty good, and adding more content would actually incentivize people to buy it.

But what does everyone else think? I actually have a rough outline for where to take the story for at least 2 or 3 arcs, but I'm pretty indecisive in choosing what to do. When I look back at the early chapters, I feel like Toyaru's adoptive-parents aren't talked about enough. His mother has no lines, and his father's distrust isn't really explored. It's sort of just brushed off in the end, but his interactions with people are vague and only "talked about". For this sort of thing, I would like an editor who could go back with me to edit those earlier chapters, and help me write more... filler? fluff? just more content to fill the void.

Anyways, vote on what you think I should do, and if anyone wants to volunteer as editor (or illustrator?), that'd be great.

And as always, feedback and suggestions are always encouraged and appreciated. Leave a comment on your thoughts, or a review to give me an ego boost.