Gin wasn’t an ordinary baby. Although he might seem like it if one just looked at him, what was different wasn’t his body but his mind. Inside of this baby boy was the mind of a teenage boy. He was in his mid-teens, about 15 or 16. But then he died on his way to school in a bus accident and somehow found himself in the body of a baby. He was named Gin after his new grandfather on his new father’s side.

At first he was somewhat worried he’d be caught. He had no idea how to act like a baby and he didn’t really want to. Instead he focused on doing only what was necessary. He stayed quiet and listened to everything his parents said. Luckily they spoke the same language as him, whether that was because they actually did or if he had some kind of change when being reborn he didn’t know. But his parents were good people. They seemed to care about him greatly, far more than his original parents had at least.

His new parents were rather unique, his mother was an albino while his father was eastern. It was odd because from what he saw his father was rather average looking while his mother was rather beautiful in an alien kind of way. So he wondered what exactly caught his mother's attention about his father. But he didn’t judge his father poorly for his appearance, after all in his previous life Gin had been fairly ugly so he was secretly pleased to find such an ordinary looking person was able to attract someone as beautiful as his new mother.

He originally thought he was still on earth because of how similar some things were. They had lights, kitchen appliances, and even working plumbing as far as he could tell. But he found out this wasn’t earth by listening to some of his parents’ conversations. They talked about mana, this obviously sparked his interest as a massive otaku. He was hopeful that he’d be able to learn magic of some kind. However they never went into detail about it.

He found out they lived outside of the city in a home that was isolated from everything around it. When they drove home in their rather ordinary car they arrived at their rather ordinary house. However he found that his parents were anything but ordinary. They had their own personal maid! Her name was Morgana and she was a good nanny. She would often tell stories to Gin. They were quite wild. Sometimes it was about powerful beasts that could destroy cities and other times about heroes who would protect the weak. They were a good way to pass the time.

He also had an older sister, her name was Sophia. She was a cute child and he was a little jealous. He had no idea what he looked like save that he had white hair. That was only because it had grown over his eyes at one point and he finally got a good look at it. Their house was severely lacking in mirrors, and he had never been in the bathrooms to check if there was a mirror in there.

Back to his sister, she was an angel. She never disobeyed their parents and loved them greatly. She was very cute in this way. She also seemed to love Gin as well. Oftentimes she would try to play with him. He would usually play along and giggle a bit here or there because her smile warmed his cold dead heart. He had long become desensitized to feelings like happiness and the idea of such a peaceful life had never crossed his mind. Even though it was boring it was better than the life he lived before.

Other than his older sister and the maid there was another girl in Gin’s life who seemed to have a special place in the hearts of his parents. Her name was Erica. They would call her his aunt, but he later learned she wasn’t really related to them. She looked somewhat eastern like his father, but more Chinese while he was more Japanese. She was apparently very important to the two of them. Even though she was clearly a fully grown adult she always acted very childish. At first he thought she had some kind of mental deficiency, but when it was just the two of them she seemed much smarter all of the sudden. He eventually realized she acted that way so that his parents would spoil her. Though his parents seemed to know it based on how they talked about her. They loved her like a real sister and Gin treated her like a real aunt, she was very kind and loved Gin like a nephew.

Time passed by excruciatingly slowly for Gin. Not having anything to do but to live within his own imagination was understandably boring. He had nothing to do. However days turned into weeks, which turned into months and soon he was nearly a year old. By this point his parents were more clearly explaining things to him. They would try to teach him words and would explain the function of various objects in the house. He found it odd. His parents seemed to treat him as if he was smarter than his sister. The way they treated the two of them were like night and day.

With his sister they were gradually acclimating her, teaching her individual words and introducing her to letters at this point. His sister was intelligent for her age and had already picked up a few letters. However they had already begun showing him letters even though he was only supposed to be one. He wasn’t sure why they treated him as if he was both smart and stupid at the same time. He was afraid they knew he was an otherworlder, but at the same time they treated him like he was unable to read or understand the usage of a fridge.

What put the final nail in the coffin of him believing they found him out was that they still treated him no different from Sophia in how they treated him when regarding their love. They still treated him like he was their son. If he was asked if he could treat someone elses kid as his own even if it was one born from him and his potential wife he would say no. So he naturally assumed others would be the same.

Time continued to pass, and he didn’t at all try to hide his intelligence anymore. At first he was tempted to out of fear, but when he showed resistance his parents couldn’t help but look at him as if amused. It was like they could see through his attempts to fake his own stupidity. So in the end he started to pretend to catch on quickly to new information. By the time he reached two he already ‘learned’ how to read and they would often leave books strewn about for him to pick up.

His father had a large study filled to the brim with all kinds of different books. There were likely thousands of books inside his study, and from what he heard once both his father and mother had long read every book in their collection. But they still left books around as if they were in the middle of reading. It was clearly done on purpose to allow Gin to flip through them. They ranged every subject from history, to fiction, and even things like geology and chemistry.

He avoided the complicated subjects at first, but eventually he ran out of other stuff to read so he read them anyway. As soon as he was finished with a book it would mysteriously disappear and new ones would replace it. By the time he was three he had read most of the books he was interested in. All that was left was the boring subjects like geology. However by this point he was sure his parents knew something was up with him. They stopped trying to teach him things and let him do as he liked. Sometimes they would even leave him to his own devices.

It was around the time that he was three that his sister finally started school. She would be driven to school by one of her parents and brought home by the other. His parents were very careful to spend an equal amount of time with both him and his sister, making sure neither one of them was more favored than the other. Naturally though Gin had a preference for spending time with his father. Some might think he’d prefer to spend time with his beautiful mother, but they would be wrong.

His mother was very overbearing. She would often bring him books and look at him with sparkling eyes as he read them. On top of that, she was surprisingly rougher with him than his father. When his father held him he was very gentle and careful, but his mother seemed to find it harder to hold him as carefully. It was never painful, but she would often tug him around suddenly. She still cared for him greatly, but it was hard to acclimate to her flighty nature.

Eventually he discovered there was no magic in this world much to his disappointment. However there were these things called mystic arts which were similar. They were magical martial arts that could accomplish magical feats. He also learned that his parents were called tamers. When he was three they finally took him outside to meet his parents tamed beasts. They were special magical creatures that could be marked with a special brand to bind them to you. You could only brand beasts after you turned 16 though so he was still a ways off from that.

This was when he first realized how special his parents were. The line up of beasts was frightening. A massive grey dragon, a large black-furred wolf with piercing red eyes, a white tiger with a royal bearing, a massive salamander, an eight-headed and tailed snake, there was also his mother's weasel which he had seen before but he hadn’t known it was a magical beast until today. He looked at his parent with some uncertainty. Were they amazing or was this normal? He couldn’t tell yet.

It was also around when he was three that he learned about affinities. Of course he had heard about them, in order to use mystic arts you needed to have affinities that will help you change mana into elemental energy which you use to fuel your mystic arts with. However what he learned after turning three was that tamed beasts are what give you affinities. Unless of course you’re born with them. Which he was, and it was now he learned about it.

Normally you’d find out when you’re a baby, but because of his special circumstances he never showed signs. Instead they took him to the doctors to have some tests done on him to determine his affinities. What they found was shocking, he had space, metal, and kinetic affinities. From what his parents said these were the among the top affinities. On top of this they explained to him on the car ride back that he had twice the mana of his sister who already had monstrous amounts of mana.

Basically he was a bigger cheat than his cheat of a sister. He was quite happy to hear this. He attributed it to his status as an otherworlder. However what he didn’t know was that just having affinities and mana meant nothing. You also needed to train to use them. Something he would learn after he turned four when his father began to teach him to use a sword. He didn’t try to work him to the point of exhaustion. His father explained that until he turned eight he would gain nothing from working his muscles as they were still developing. Instead what they were doing was teaching him to properly use the sword.

It was tough work, and at first he was very resistant to doing it. But after seeing how disappointed his father was with his lacking motivation he couldn’t help but work harder. His new parents were different from his old parents. Instead of fighting against them and treating them like strangers, he treated them like his real parents and would do his best to listen to them and make them proud. So he grit his teeth and did his best to learn the swordsmanship his father was teaching him. Like this his life continued on as he did his best to hide his nature as an otherworlder while trying to live up to their expectations of him.