Rebirth From Ordinary Person To The Strongest

I like the rain because when I listen to it, it makes me feel like I\'m all alone.

What I like about it is how the sky turns gloomy. That grayish color, which can\'t be painted with just one shade, is beautiful.

I like the rain because when I look at it, it feels like there\'s something filthier than my own heart.

There are other things I like besides the rain.

The library after school. The smell of a brand-new book. The feel of a fresh mechanical pencil lead on paper.

In my world, that\'s all I need.

So, on rainy days after school, I\'m always alone, reading in the library.

That\'s my luxury.

However, I know it won\'t last forever.

"Mashima, can you put these books away?"

"...Um, Sensei."

"What?"

I closed the book I was in the middle of reading as I stared at the books plopped down on my desk.

Then, I looked at my homeroom teacher.

She\'s a woman in her late thirties, single.

Her perfume stings my nose.

I hate that smell.

Her flashy makeup, like a threatening animal, catches my eye.

I hate that color.

But I\'m not the only one who dislikes her.

She also dislikes me.

She can\'t stand that I don\'t fit in at school or in the class. I know she\'s trying to drive me out, like some wild animal trying to expel something foreign from its territory.

Still, I like to think we both have enough sense not to say it out loud.

"Sensei, I have something urgent to do today."

"It\'s fine, isn\'t it? You\'re on the library committee, after all. And your \'urgent\' thing is just reading a book, right?"

After saying that, she messily dumped more books on my desk and returned to the teachers\' room.

What a joke, I thought.

I know. I know she turns a blind eye when the noisy boys in the class, acting like monkeys at a zoo, sneak their phones into school even though it\'s against the rules. I know she ignores the girls who shamelessly upload TikTok videos of themselves dancing and sneak in snacks, also against the rules.

Yet she\'s strict with me.

I guess she thinks I\'m an easy target.

I could have ignored the books she dumped on my desk and left, but I couldn\'t stand the idea of letting someone I hate dirty the place I love, so I reluctantly put them away. It took much longer than I expected.

I checked the clock. 5:30 p.m.

"...It\'s already half an hour past."

I usually leave by 5 p.m., but today, finding the right place to put the books away took extra time.

I need to leave soon.

If I don\'t, he\'ll come.

I grabbed my bag and left the library, only to find him standing there—the worst possible outcome.

Dressed in black. Eyes like a frog\'s—huge and bulging.

His fingers, also like a frog\'s, yet he stood on two legs and was about 190 cm tall—a creepy man.

Even though he\'s clearly dangerous, no one else can see him.

So I pretend I can\'t either.

"M-Mashima-chaaaan... I-I-I saw it... I saw that woman throw the books at you...! That\'s unforgivable, right...? It\'s wrong for someone like you to be looked down on by an old hag like her, don\'t you think...?"

He whispered in my ear. I ignored it.

Quietly, I locked the door. Then I turned around.

Pretending not to see the frog-man, I walked past him.

"L-Let\'s kill her. Let\'s kill that woman. If we do, will you be happy, Mashima-chan? Don\'t you think so too?"

It was about a month ago that this man first appeared in front of me.

That day, it was raining just like today, and I was reading a book, just like today.

As the broadcasting club began the dismissal announcement, I left the library, only to see him standing alone on the school grounds.

At first, I thought he was a suspicious person, but when our eyes met, that was the start of my misfortune.

He appears from nowhere and disappears into nowhere.

That\'s why I thought the best thing to do was not to provoke him.

Because when a girl I passed after school once said, "Doesn\'t that guy smell?" in a low voice, this frog-man got angry and turned her into a tadpole, tossing her out of a window.

"A frog\'s child is a frog. So, a piece of trash\'s child is trash! If they disappear, Mashima-chan will be happy. Happy!"

Saying exactly the same thing he was saying now.

I didn\'t understand it. The police wrote it off as a missing person case.

Some random new teacher showed up after that girl disappeared, but I think they suspected I had something to do with it. They started nosing around, and they too got turned into a tadpole.

That\'s why I decided not to see anything anymore.

I shut my eyes, blocked my ears, and just thought about the things I liked.

The sound of rain. The library after school. The smell of new books. The feel of fresh pencil lead.

That\'s all I need.

I don\'t need people\'s malice. I don\'t need the creepy frog-man.

I don\'t need anything. I just want to be surrounded by the things I love.

As I went to return the library key to the teachers\' room, I saw my homeroom teacher scolding the new teacher who had started this year.

She was making sure everyone could see and hear it.

"L-Let\'s kill her. If we do, you\'ll be happy. You\'ll be so happy!"

I ignored the frog-man\'s words entirely as I left the teachers\' room.

I pulled out my folding umbrella from my bag and changed into my shoes at the entrance.

I love it.

It makes me feel like I\'m the only person in the world.

There\'s no frog-man, no one hurling malice at me.

It feels like the world is mine alone.

That\'s what I was thinking when I left the school gates and saw another suspicious person standing there.

His head was like a slug... or maybe a snail.

His huge, protruding eyes stared at me and the frog-man.

It was such a bizarre sight that I stopped in my tracks. I made eye contact with the strange man.

"S-So, you really can see us, Mashima-chan!"

The frog-man next to me yelled.

I knew this was bad.

Why was there another weirdo here?

I dropped my umbrella without thinking.

I had to run, I thought.

I didn\'t know where to run to, but I knew I had to run.

"I\'ve protected you, so, Mashima-chan! H-Have my babies! Lots of tadpoles! I know it\'s a little out of season, but we can make the brains of your classmates into a pond for the eggs to float in! Then I\'ll be so happy!"

The rain pelted down on me.

A hand stretched out from behind and touched my shoulder. I looked—it was the slug-man.

His slimy touch made me throw my bag at him.

The slug-man recoiled.

I took the chance to flee.

"H-Hey! She\'s mine! I saw her first!"

I could hear the frog-man\'s voice.

I could hear footsteps running after me.

No. No. What the hell is this?

I hate running. I\'m slow.

I knew I couldn\'t outrun them. No, I didn\'t want to get caught.

I wanted help, but no one could see the frog-man, so they just stared at me as I ran desperately.

Only I was subjected to these curious stares.

I didn\'t do anything.

We just made eye contact.

Just eye contact, and now this.

"Ah...!"

Running in loafers is hard enough.

The rain made the road slippery. And then, a manhole.

I slipped and fell.

I tried to catch myself, but my hand couldn\'t stop the impact, and I rolled over once. I could feel my uniform getting dirty. I knew people were staring at me weirdly.

Enjoy new stories from m-v l\'e-NovelFire

The rain poured down in large droplets.

"...I hate this."

The sound of the frog-man\'s footsteps. The slug-man\'s slithering noise.

They were getting closer. I knew I couldn\'t escape anymore.

Tears mixed with the rain.

"Excuse me..."

I heard a voice.

It was a little kid.

A little kid with a yellow umbrella and a black schoolbag.

"...Are you okay?"

His face was young. Probably a first or second grader.

No one else had spoken to me, yet this little boy did, and the tears flowed more freely.

"Yeah. I\'m fine. I just fell a bit."

"Oh... um, I didn\'t mean that."

The boy tilted his head in confusion.

His gaze was directed at the two men.

"M-Mashima-chan! You can\'t! You\'re going to have a baby soon, you have to take care of your body—"

The frog-man\'s voice cut off.

No, it wasn\'t just his voice that cut off—his entire neck was gone.

As if someone had cut it cleanly in a perfect circle, his head was just gone.

The slug-man\'s eyes bulged.

The next moment, the slug-man\'s body split cleanly in two, right down the middle.

Both of them, the frog-man and the slug-man, dissolved into a black mist and disappeared together.

They were dead. Just like that, the frog-man and the slug-man were gone.

I didn\'t know why, but I understood they were truly gone.

"That should be all of them," the little boy muttered quietly.

"Are your legs okay, miss?"

"Huh? Oh, y-yeah... I\'m fine, but..."

I looked down at my legs, only to realize that the injury was gone.

...Just a minute ago, I had been bleeding, hadn\'t I?

Confused, I looked at the boy, and he extended his hand to help me stand up.

"Th-thank you... Um, about what just happened..."

"What just happened?"

The boy tilted his head innocently.

I thought he had seen the frog-man, but maybe it was just my imagination.

"Be careful not to slip again, okay?"

"Y-yeah. Uh, wait a second!"

I called out to the little boy as he turned to leave.

"What\'s your name?"

"My name? It\'s Itsuki," he said, raising his yellow umbrella.

"I\'m Itsuki Kisaragi."

Something new was added to the list of things I like.