Chapter 1:

The alarm went off at 6:45, same as always, and Hayato Haise silenced it with the back of his hand without opening his eyes all the way. He lay there a second longer, looking at the water stain on the ceiling that had looked like a dog for as long as he could remember, then got up.

Nothing about the morning was different. His uniform was folded over the chair where he'd left it. His bag was already packed. He wasn't in a hurry and he wasn't dragging his feet either — he just moved through the apartment the way he did every day, on autopilot, the way you do when nothing has surprised you in a long time.

He wasn't stupid. He wasn't a genius either. He was ordinary in the plain, unremarkable way most people are ordinary, and mostly fine with it.

His parents had already left for work by the time he got up, so he ate cold rice standing over the sink. There was a sticky note on the fridge in his mother's handwriting: [Don't forget your umbrella. Supposed to rain.] 

He forgot the umbrella.

The walk to school took twenty minutes, down a narrow residential street that opened onto a wider road with a row of convenience stores and a little park. He walked it the same way he always did, hands in his pockets, bag on one shoulder, not really looking at anything.

Outside a grocery store an old man was fighting with an overloaded cart, and Hayato grabbed one side of it without a word and helped haul it up to the door. The old man thanked him. Hayato just nodded and kept walking.

That was the thing about him. He didn't do it for thanks, didn't even really think about it — it was closer to breathing, something his body did before his brain weighed in. A classmate had asked him once why he always got involved in stuff that wasn't his problem, and Hayato actually thought about it for a second before he answered.

"I don't know. Just feels wrong not to."

He meant it, too. That half-second of moving toward someone who needed help was about the only time he felt fully awake. Everything else was just the space between.

He heard the truck before he saw it — tires screeching, a horn, and then a flash of pink at the edge of his vision. A little girl, maybe five, had chased a ball into the road and now she was just standing there, frozen, staring at the truck bearing down on her.

Hayato was already running.

He didn't think about it. He never did. That was the part nobody would understand later, when they tried to make it into something it wasn't — there was no calculation, no moment of noble sacrifice. There was a kid who couldn't move and a body that was moving before the fear even had time to catch up to him.

He shoved her clear with both arms.

Felt the impact.

Then nothing.

The nothing went on for a long time. Then, slowly, something.

Warmth. Woodsmoke and something sweet cooking nearby. A ceiling of rough wooden beams. Thin curtains letting in pale morning light.

He blinked. Blinked again.

[This isn't my ceiling.] 

He sat up slowly. His body felt wrong — lighter than it should've been, the arms pushing against the mattress thinner than he remembered them being. He looked down at his hands and stopped.

Small. Soft. Hands that had never carried anything heavy in their life.

He touched his face without thinking about it, then his hair, which was long now, past his shoulders, and when he pulled a strand in front of his eyes to look at it, it was blonde.

His hair was blonde.

He was still sitting there trying to process that when a voice came up through the floorboards, warm and a little annoyed, the tone of someone repeating herself for the third time.

"Quinn! Breakfast's getting cold, and go help your father with the wood!"

Hayato went very still.

[Quinn.] 

The grief hit first. Not for himself — that came later, quieter — but for his mother, specifically her face, and that sticky note on the fridge. She'd written it that morning with no idea it would be the last thing she ever said to him, more or less. He thought about her coming home tonight to an empty apartment. Waiting. Calling his phone.

He pressed the back of this small strange hand against his mouth.

[She's going to blame herself,] he thought. [She's going to think if she'd just been home. She's going to read that note a hundred times.] 

His father would go quiet the way he always did with anything painful, fold it up and not mention it for years. His friends would stand around at the funeral not knowing what to say, because honestly, he hadn't been the kind of person people made speeches about. Just Hayato. The guy who carried your groceries and forgot his umbrella.

He'd thrown his life away. Not bravely, not for some reason anyone could point to — just on instinct, the way he did everything — and now the people who loved him were the ones who'd pay for it.

The guilt sat in his chest like a stone he'd swallowed whole.

The headache came without warning. Pressure behind his eyes, and then a flood of images and sounds that weren't his — a round-faced woman laughing over a cooking fire, a broad-shouldered man carrying timber across a yard, the smell of a forest path in the morning, chickens, the weight of a wooden bucket in his hand.

A whole life pouring into him at once, like water into a cup that already had a crack running through it.

He gripped the edge of the bed frame and waited it out. When it passed he was breathing hard, but he knew things now he hadn't known a minute ago. The name of the village. The layout of the house. The names of the two people downstairs.

He knew what Quinn Hale had eaten for breakfast every single morning for eleven years.

He sat with that for a while.

[Quinn.] 

He thought about her — not like a stranger anymore, but with the closeness of a memory that wasn't quite his. Quiet girl. Helpful. Liked sitting by the window in the evenings. Scared of spiders, too proud to admit it.

Gone now. Because of him. Because whatever ran the machinery of life and death had decided to drop Hayato Haise into a space someone else had already been living in.

The stone in his chest got heavier.

"QUINN."

He flinched at the sharpness in it.

Downstairs, Quinn's mother had run out of patience. He looked at the door, then down at his hands again, then over at the small mirror hanging slightly crooked on the wall — and for the first time, actually looked at the face that belonged to him now.

A girl. Young. Blonde hair loose around her shoulders, red eyes a little wide with shock. An honest, unremarkable face, the kind that probably smiled easily, before today.

He looked at it for a while.

Then let out a breath through his nose.

[Alright.] 

He couldn't undo what he'd done to his own family. Couldn't go back. And he couldn't give Quinn her life back either — that was the part that settled into him like bedrock, the part he couldn't argue his way around. She was gone. Whatever ordinary, small, good life she would've lived, he'd taken it from her without meaning to.

The least he could do was not waste what was left of it.

[Just be Quinn,] he thought. [Live quietly. Don't cause trouble. Let her family be happy. Let this life be peaceful. That's it. That's all there is left to do.] 

It wasn't noble. It wasn't a plan, even, not really. It was just the only thing he could think of that felt like it mattered.

He stood. His legs were shorter than he was used to, and he misjudged the distance to the floor and nearly went down before he caught the bedpost. He steadied himself, pushed the hair out of his face, and looked at the door one more time.

Downstairs, Quinn's father was carrying wood. Quinn's mother was keeping breakfast warm. They were waiting for their daughter.

Hayato walked over and opened the door.