They say your life flashes before your eyes when you die.
Mine didn't.
No happy memories. No childhood laughter. No flash of sunlight through my bedroom window. Just the roar of gunfire, the acrid sting of smoke, and the pounding of boots on shattered concrete. I remember pain—raw and searing—as shrapnel tore through my side. I remember the heat of the explosion behind me, close enough to boil the air, but not close enough to kill my squad. I remember their voices—desperate, cracking with fear—begging me to fall back.
But I didn't.
I couldn't.
Because if I didn't hold the line, they would die.
And I'd already seen too many kids—barely old enough to shave—get zipped into body bags.
So I stood my ground. Blood soaking into my uniform. Rifle shaking in my hands. And when the grenade landed just a few feet away, I didn't curse, or scream, or pray.
I smiled. Just a little.
Because I'd done my job.
Then… nothing.
No pain. No light. No sound. Just the empty hum of oblivion. I thought that was it. That I'd finally get to rest.
But I was wrong.
Because the next thing I knew… I was breathing.
Not labored, panicked breaths like on the battlefield—but soft, shallow ones. The kind that come with new lungs and a quiet room. I was warm, wrapped in something soft. My skin was smooth. My joints didn't ache. My body didn't feel like a battlefield.
But it wasn't my body.
My vision was blurry, and my muscles felt like pudding. Nothing moved the way I wanted it to. My limbs were soft and uncoordinated, my neck barely strong enough to lift my head. Every noise was too loud, too close, and every light seemed to burn my eyes.
Panic crept in first—cold and sharp.
Was I in a hospital?
Had I survived?
Had I failed to save them?
I tried to speak, but all that came out was a soft, broken gurgle. I tried to sit up, to grab onto something—anything—but my arms wouldn't obey. My body didn't feel like mine. I was trapped. Weak. Helpless.
My heart pounded in my chest like it wanted out. For a moment, I thought I was still dying. Some kind of weird aftershock. A coma dream. My brain giving me one last cruel hallucination before everything finally shut down.
Then I heard her voice.
A woman—soft, warm, unfamiliar.
She cooed gently as she held me close, her scent wrapping around me like a blanket. Something in me settled… but only for a second. The confusion came roaring back. My instincts screamed danger, but there was none. No gunfire. No alarms. No orders barked over the radio. Just the rustle of silk sheets and the quiet hum of some strange machine nearby.
I wasn't in any military base. I wasn't in a field hospital. And this definitely wasn't Earth—not the one I remembered.
I was somewhere else.
Then the impossible realization crept in.
This wasn't a hallucination.
It wasn't a dream.
This was real.
And I... was a baby.
It didn't make sense. It wasn't logical. But I couldn't deny the evidence—my body, the strange language I couldn't yet process, the faces that weren't from any nation I'd known.
Rebirth.
Reincarnation.
It sounded insane.
But the more time passed, the more undeniable it became. Slowly, fear turned to awe. Confusion melted into grim understanding. This wasn't the end of my story—it was the beginning of another.
I'd read about things like this. In the stolen hours before curfew, huddled under my blanket with a cracked tablet, reading comics and web novels about second chances. I never believed in any of it. Not really.
But here I was.
Some people dream of wealth. Others wish for power.
Me?
I just wanted time. Peace. The chance to live before dying.
I never had that.
Not until now.
It took days—maybe weeks—before I could really start making sense of my new surroundings. Time had a weird flow when you were trapped in a baby's body. But I listened. I observed. I paid attention like my life depended on it. Because if there was one thing I'd learned in war, it was how to gather intel.
The first thing I noticed was the woman who held me—warm, smiling, full of energy. She had long, sky-blue hair that shimmered under the soft lights of our home. She moved with grace, but her hands were calloused from work. She smelled like motor oil, perfume, and something nostalgic. Home. She spoke with a light, lilting voice, sometimes humming while she scribbled notes or tapped at a small tablet.
I didn't know her name at first.
But then I heard it.
"Panchy," someone said from across the room. "You forgot your coffee again."
I froze.
Panchy.
That name rang in my brain like an alarm bell. My eyes snapped to the man speaking—tall, gentle-eyed, mustachioed, with a lab coat and a capsule-shaped mug in one hand.
Dr. Briefs.
And that meant the girl climbing up the couch behind me, babbling about circuits and blinking lights…
"It's almost done, Mom! I'm so close to making it beep!"
…was Bulma.
I watched her—no, studied her. The way her wild blue hair flared out in all directions. The way she talked about "scanners" and "energy readings" like it was second nature. She couldn't have been more than five or six years old, but her brain was already running faster than the average adult's.
That confirmed it.
This wasn't a new world.
This was a fictional world.
Dragon Ball.
I had been reborn into Dragon Ball.
The shock was almost enough to make my tiny baby brain short-circuit. For days, I just lay there, processing it all. I remembered every arc, every villain, every world-shaking event. This was a universe where people could level mountains with a punch. Where death wasn't permanent. Where gods existed, aliens invaded, and time itself bent under power.
And I? I was human.
A regular human.
No tail. No ki. No absurd battle potential or secret hidden bloodline. Just the memories of a dead soldier who gave his life for his squad, and a second chance I didn't ask for—but desperately needed.
It wasn't all fear, though. There was something comforting about it. My new mother—Panchy—was kind. Sweet. Always smiling. She treated me like a treasure, even when I cried for no reason or puked on her shirt. My father was gentle, patient, and impossibly brilliant. The kind of man who'd offer you tea while building a spaceship in the garage.
And Bulma?
She was loud, bossy, and always covered in grease. But she talked to me when no one else was around. She'd tell me her ideas, show me her inventions—even hold up colorful blocks and pretend we were playing when I couldn't even sit up properly.
She wasn't just my sister.
She was my link to this world.
And the more I listened, the more I remembered.
One night, after Bulma had gone to bed and our parents were watching a science program on the wall-mounted holo-screen, I lay in my crib, staring up at the stars through the skylight.
I could see them so clearly now. No smoke. No artillery fire. No drones buzzing in the distance. Just a sky full of stars, calm and unbroken.
In my last life, I didn't get to live. The world took that from me. From all of us. It turned children into soldiers, dreams into orders, and life into a countdown.
But here?
Here I had time.
I could breathe.
And one day, when I was strong enough… I would make sure this world never turned into what mine did.
Not if I could help it.