My Reincarnation as a Chicken

“Shit… I still suck at it.”

I took off the vice master and glared at it. I hadn’t made any significant progress while playing due to the terrible anti-player mechanics.

“Stupid VR games. Who needs em anyways?”

Grabbing my phone, I checked the time. It was 9:58. Which meant I ended up spending over four hours playing the stupid game.

My stomach grumbled, so I figured it was time to eat. Mitsuki’s cat was fast asleep on my bed, so I decided not to disturb it. In the end, I left the room as quietly as possible to rush down to the kitchen to grab my dinner.

“Oi, nii-san. I’ve been calling you all day.”

A clearly annoyed Mitsuki jumped in front of the door leading to the kitchen with both arms spread out as if to say I wasn’t allowed to enter the kitchen.

“Sorry, I was playing games. Later.”

I tried shoving her out of the way, but she only bit my palm, making me jump back.

“Oi, oi. You don’t need to bit me just because I didn’t hear you.”

For some reason, I’d forgotten just how much of a brat Mitsuki could be when she wanted to.

“What did you do to Akane-nee-san?”

“Akane? What’s up with her?”

All I remember was hearing her run out of the room at lightspeed. Honestly pretty impressive if you ask me.

“She ran out of here crying. What did you do to her?”

“Crying? No, no. Her eyes simply couldn’t handle the speed she was moving at. Haven’t you seen that thing in movies when someone’s standing on a rocket and tears escape their eyes?”

I tried moving Mitsuki out of the way, but she refused to budge.

“If you won’t speak, I won’t move out of the way.”

Mitsuki offered a bargain. The only simple way to the kitchen was to agree to this.

“Fine. I told her that I wouldn’t be able to go to the fireworks with her. If you’re happy now, please move out of the way.”

I grabbed her shoulders with a bit more force this time, planning to throw her out of the way.

“No, no! Why did you cancel all of a sudden!?”

“Just felt like it.”

I shrugged, not giving much thought to my response.

“What? Do you know how long onee-san’s been waiting for this night? It was practically a life-or-death situation in her eyes.”

“Yeah? Well, it was one in my eyes as well. Move.”

“Was it bullies? Did they threaten you again? Mom already handled that so why are you still scared of them?”

Bullies? Ah, yes. I used to get bullied back in middle school, didn’t I?

Now that I thought about it more, I was slowly losing my memories of my life as a human. To think I’d forgotten what plagued me for close to a decade of my miserable life so easily. And when I think about it, I simply can’t feel anything.

However, it would seem Mitsuki mistook my silent thinking for a confirmation.

“You spineless bastard! You’re going to hurt Mitsuki’s feelings just cause of a bunch of stupid kids?”

After saying that, Mitsuki kicked me in the leg and ran up the stairs. I stumbled back, allowing her to escape. I just clicked my tongue then opened the door to the kitchen.

At least, I tried to. The door didn’t open no matter how hard I tried.

“If you want to get into the kitchen, take Mitsuki out to the fireworks and send me pictures of you doing it!”

Ku-chuck!

Just then, I heard the sound of a room door being locked. My eyes widened, realising just what she’d done. I ran up stairs to her room and knocked heavily on her door, but she didn’t respond. I couldn’t open it and I was starting to feel despair. And to top it off, my stomach decided to act up.

“Mitsuki!”

“Go. Now.”

*

In the end, Mitsuki won and I was on my way to Akane’s house. Or so I would have her think.

I’d just have dinner at Akane’s place. Due to the City guards – super advanced robot cops -, crime rate in Japan was virtually zero and parents didn’t bother themselves too much with children walking about late in the night.

My parents in particular spent most of their time out of the house, so Mitsuki and I had gone on quite a few late-night strolls. Akane’s parents were probably home around this time and hopefully wouldn’t mind having me for a sleep over or something.

It was a 10-minute walk to Akane’s place and I ended up spending the time thinking about how come I was still stuck in this virtual world. The timer had disappeared, so that should have meant that I was free.

Maybe I was overthinking it, but I was starting to have a bad premonition on the situation I was in. In the end, I wasn’t able to think up any proper ideas before arriving on Akane’s doorsteps.

I rang the door bell and decided to wait. After a minute or two of waiting, the door opened up and Akane's father stood before me with a frown on his face. He was a grizzly bear – hairy arms and face, huge in stature and a very mean looking face. He glared at me coldly with his black eyes.

Normally, someone would be shaking in their boots, but I knew that he simply couldn’t help it. His face was just naturally scary.

“Good evening, Mister- erhm-”

‘Huh? What was his name again?’

That was odd. His name was literally hanging on the tip of my tongue, yet I couldn’t get it.

“Um, is Akane around?”

I decided to move past that issue before he noticed that I’d forgotten his name. Unfortunately, it would seem that he’d caught on to that.

“Huh? You ignore my calls, walk up to my house, forget my name and you still have the balls to ask where my kid is?”

He growled at me then lifted me up by the collar. I felt like all of this was a bit excessive, but I just went with the flow. This whole simulation was too interesting.

“Dear, who was it?”

A sweet voice came from the other side. It didn’t take a genius to know that the voice belonged to Akane's mother. A red-head European woman with dazzling blue eyes.

You see, the story behind Akane’s parents was that Akane’s father was only part Japanese. When he turned 18, his dad took him to a college in Europe so he could meet his mother. While spending his time there, he ended up finding Akane’s mother, both moved to Japan and started a life here.

“It’s the stupid brat we shouldn’t have let her get involved with.”

“Eh?”

I blurted out, surprised by his remark. The man then dropped me on the ground roughly, but I still managed to land on my feet.

“Now our baby girl’s run out. Tsk, I’m going out.”

With that, the man walked out into the snowy night. I looked at his back as he walked away and for some reason, he looked much fiercer tonight.

“Will you come in? It’s going to be a cold night.”

Akane’s mother offered with a warm smile. I still didn’t get why he was acting like that, but maybe a discussion with her mother would help. I also couldn’t remember her name for some reason.

We went into the house, she seated me down in the hall and warmed up some coco for me. It took roughly 5 minutes for her to set it up on the table and she sat on the couch, right next to me.

I took a sip of the coco and a smile spread across my face. I missed the taste of coco.

If it weren’t for the scary death quest, I might have loved to stay in here forever.

“Akira, you remember that one favour we asked of you a year ago?”

She suddenly brought up something. I wasn’t sure since they’d told me a lot of things over the years. Still, I could sort of guess what she was talking about.

“Not sure. My memory’s a bit fuzzy.”

I feigned ignorance so I didn’t end up bringing something completely outrageous to the conversation by accident.

“Is that so? Maybe all those kebabs you’ve been buying should jog your memory.”

My body flinched and I almost choked on the coco. I coughed to clear my throat then set the cup down, realising we were about to talk about the more serious things.

“You see, we had an argument with Akane today, about that thing she’s not supposed to be doing and there was a sudden revelation. Do you know what that is?”

She furrowed her brows, but I avoided her gaze, looking at the black screen of the super-sized tv.

“N-No.”

A bashful reply.

“That the boy we’ve been asking to help keep our daughter on the right path is a sinful liar, thief and downright deviant.”

My heart split in two at the insults I was getting.

“We called over a priest today to come speak to her about her… “issues”, but today she acted off. She came home crying, then spent over an hour arguing with us on the matter, before telling us that you yourself have been indulging in the very immoral acts we asked you to protect her from. Do you know how that feels, hm?”

‘She was crying even when she got back home?’

“M-Must be heart breaking.”

“Oh, you have no idea. In fact, it’s really disappointing. Of course, my husband lost his cool and unfortunately could not contain his anger anymore.”

For the first time today, my eyes widened with curiosity.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, spare the rod, spoil the child.”

“No.”

“Yes, sadly he had to punish her. We tried so hard with words alone, but it’s been a good year and nothing changed. He couldn’t take it anymore that his only child was a deviant.”

Slowly, I was starting to feel angry. Who beats their child just because of that?

“Looks like he was about to give you the rod as well, but I guess he chose to find Akane first.”

She explained the whole scenario that unfolded in front of the door to me. Suddenly, the pieces were starting to fall in place.

“Did you perhaps tell Akane that I was in charge of keeping her away from all this stuff?”

I looked at her, and she answered with one deadly smile. The colour drained from my face and I was only left with their weird sense despair.

“Well… fuck.”

The words flew out of my mouth with no control whatsoever.

“Akira? What sort of langua-”

It would seem, Akane found out that I was throwing her under the bus. That definitely wasn’t a good look on my part.

In that moment, I felt something click in my head. A voice played in my head. This voice belonged to Akane and it made my heart sink.

“Would you ever throw me under the bus for money?"

“No. Of course not. What kind of stupid question is that?”

As if on cue, the memory from that night played vividly. The reason why Akane cried that night and also the reason why she completely changed later on, was all because of me.

She knew what I’d done, but still chose to ask me just to see if I would tell her the truth. Yet, I lied as easily as one would breathe. My selfish, cowardly decision to forsake her in order to make some small amount of money.

I really was a spineless bastard.

A depressed sigh escaped my mouth as this entire scenario started to feel more and more like a pain in the ass.

Still, for the first time in a really long time, I felt my heart throb. Not out of fear or anguish. But a weird feeling I couldn’t describe. Was this what ‘true guilt’ felt like?

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. God. Fuck.”

“Aki-”

Akane’s mother was going to nag me about language, so I cut her off. I took out my phone and the time was 10:20. The fireworks started at 11:30 and a train trip from here to Yokohama was 40-50 minutes. An air bus would be 10-20 minutes, but they were most likely closed by this time and also caused a decent amount of money. If I took the train, I could make it before New year’s.

Having confirmed the situation, I ran out of the house at full force. I had terrible athletic ability so it wasn’t anything to boast about.