When Miao Muwu opened his eyes again, he was not aware of the situation for a moment.
The sharp senses of a newborn make him feel that the surrounding light is too bright and people's shouting is too noisy.
Involuntarily, he showed an uncomfortable expression and uttered a clear protest, but a few seconds after opening his mouth he was startled by his own voice.
First, he suddenly realized that he shouldn't have just been separated from the womb... if he was indeed born immediately... he subconsciously complained in clear words, but secondly, he found that his words could not form complete sentences at all - his tongue was very stiff as if it was tied, and he could only make waving sounds.
While making this somewhat absurd assumption, Miao Muwu's eyes gradually adapted to the strong light around him, and then his ears could distinguish the excited shouts around him.
The first person that caught my eye was a man who looked very young but definitely not a teenager. His hair was a color between blonde and brown, his big eyes and high nose bridge showed a typical Caucasian face, and his body was very solid, like the bodybuilding male model on the billboard. He shouted excitedly to Naegi Takeshi, and then yelled to the side.
Miao Muwu didn't understand what this person was shouting, although there was a high probability that he was his father in this life, and... he was probably saying something congratulating his mother.
Then, when Takeshi Naegi saw a woman's face enter his field of vision, his eyes were immediately drawn to her.
It was a face with smooth lines yet sharp, and somewhat neutral, but even with a shaved head, it would never be mistaken for a man's face. Under the naturally loose medium-short hair, the clear eyes seemed firm and gentle even though they revealed the fatigue that was inevitably brought about by childbirth. The breath exhaled from under the tip of her small nose and from her mouth painted with pink and white lipstick was also very steady. For someone who had just faced severe pain, even Miaogi Wu felt that she was probably in good physical condition.
At first he thought her hair turned white because of the light, but after comparing it carefully with the man's head, he discovered that the woman actually had smooth white hair that was almost snow-white.
Although Takeshi Naegi originally thought that white hair, which only existed in the elderly and those who used hair dye in reality, was purely a otaku's fantasy, this woman, who was obviously no more than 30 years old, quickly fascinated him, even making Takeshi Naegi forget that he had to continue moaning or yelling to complain and pretend to cry like a normal newborn.
And there is another important reason which also proves that this woman is well-nourished - after looking at her neck, Takeshi Naegi's gaze stopped and could not move an inch further.
Because she was wearing a single piece of clothing that looked like a hospital gown, the height of the woman's breasts could not be concealed at all. In the eyes of Takeshi Naegi, the size of her bust was exaggerated. When he recalled it, he even felt that in his previous life, among all the women he had visual contact with within 10 meters in real life, there was no one with a bigger bust than hers.
But the size was not so exaggerated as to cause physical disgust. If you had to say it, it was probably just slightly away from the critical point where things would turn into the opposite extreme... In short, when he saw her breasts, his mind uncontrollably began to imagine what they would look like.
Just as Miao Mu Wu was admiring this pair of heavenly creations, the couple became confused and worried about his abruptly stopped "crying", and continued to discuss a few sentences in a language that Miao Mu Wu could not understand, but after a while the woman giggled easily, lowered her head to Miao Mu Wu in her arms, and said something in an extremely gentle tone, which sounded like temptation to him.
Then, she lifted her shirt, letting the boy see the sight he longed to see. And then another moment passed, and this woman, who knew nothing about the nature of the newborn in her arms, fulfilled her obligations as a mother.
When Naegi Takeshi began to respond to the woman's expectations out of his double hungry instincts, with greedy sucking sounds coming from between his lips, he realized that although he had chosen an extraordinary body before his rebirth, he was still only zero years old after all, and there were still many things he could not do.
But he had almost made up his mind about this woman.
——————
Takeshi Naegi had not come across many fictional works about rebirth. Even if he had, most of them were typical works discussing fate, such as "The Butterfly Effect". Therefore, he had never even thought that such a thing would happen to him. However, after he really escaped the death penalty on the operating table and got a second chance, he was sincerely grateful for the generosity of the fox demon.
Although his choice caused him to be unable to understand the language of the couple, and he couldn't even be 100% sure that the man was his biological father... it was also possible that the woman remarried with a posthumous child... but because his brain probably developed in the womb to the level of a teenager like in his previous life, he was able to quickly grasp the situations around him and understand them.
First of all, the fox demon didn't lie to him - he chose to be reborn in a family formed by a retired couple. This option was in the lower middle of that column, which meant that the economic conditions were definitely better than food and clothing, and maybe even wealthy. Although Naegi Takeshi regretted it for a while after realizing that the new world he arrived in was at the level of technology in the Middle Ages, that is, there was no air conditioning, no electric fans, and no refrigerators, the size and cleanliness of his room, especially the sufficient supply of candles, lamp oil, and firewood, made him realize that before he awakened the qualities he had chosen as he grew up, he didn't have to worry about starving or freezing to death, and even if thieves, kidnappers, and the like broke into his home... No, his parents might not even allow that to happen.
Naturally, even though his mother would use her huge treasures to satisfy her child's visual, taste and other needs every day, Naegi Takeshi could only endure lying in the cradle for about five weeks at most. In his eyes, his world was confined to a structure with fences on all sides, like a prison without a ceiling. So when his mother picked him up to breastfeed him one time, he screamed and reached out to the ground to try to crawl. But he should have guessed but didn't expect that when he made too much noise, the woman would sigh helplessly or reach out to touch his head with a smile, and then he would fall into a coma, and when he woke up he would often find himself back in the "cage" again.
But Miaogi Wu did not give up, just like he had used the method of pestering several times to satisfy his desires in his previous life. After trying several times, one day when the man was present, the former persuaded the woman with a silly smile, and then the woman seemed to hesitate and put the child on the blanket on the ground.
Then, Naegi Takeshi excitedly began to crawl around the room and grope around everywhere, causing the woman to cover her mouth to express her shock, while the man had an expression that said, "See what I said? He'll be fine~".
Six months after birth, the boy was able to move around the two-story home without any obstacles. Although the woman insisted on carrying him up and down the stairs when he first came into contact with the stairs, she gave up after discovering that he appeared on different floors in a short period of time several times, and began to let the child climb up and down, just like her husband who seemed to be careless about the child's care from the beginning.
Yes, Takeshi Naegi has already confirmed the identity of this man and woman to him - they are his biological parents, the woman's name is "Loreya", the man's name is "Val", and their family name is "Erius".
Miaogi Wu knew all this because after half a year he had been able to understand some of the words used in this world... at least the words used in communication between these two humans... Naturally, his parents were also deliberately using an experiential education method that seemed to be universal in every country and era to make him learn basic language. The most frequent call that Miaogi Wu heard, especially when his mother couldn't find anyone else in the house, was his name.
He was named "Sandy Peo"... the first half "Sandy" was used as a nickname.
The boy thought the name was not bad from his own perspective, and he believed that parents would not call their children cats or dogs or anything like that - it was obvious at first glance that Mr. and Mrs. Elius were definitely not illiterate people who had not received formal education. They also had a special study room and two cabinets of books at home. They must have named their child with the help of allusions and had clear expectations for their child.
Moreover, the boy felt that when he could speak and make requests to his parents, using his original name might cause some unnecessary misunderstandings and troubles. Besides... maybe his original name could be used as a code name after he became successful, just like the villain "Hidden Demon" in a fantasy work for teenagers...
No, he was not a villain, but a hero - this world might be destroyed in about 36 years. He did not need to think about what he should do in the new world after his rebirth. This kind of thing was decided when he was stuck between life and death.
Of course, in the process, and after accomplishing the mission that must be accomplished both publicly and privately, he wants to enjoy life... in his own way.
Although this body, after growing for half a year, seems to have acquired the mobility that even his father would be surprised and look at with serious scrutiny, it certainly cannot do many things yet. However, Sandy's brain belongs to an adolescent boy approaching adulthood, and he is very clear that his desires have never subsided.
However, compared to the indulgence in his previous life, he knew that he had to be patient in this reborn self - at present, the only woman he could touch was his mother Loria, but even if she breastfed him defenselessly every time, Sandy just acted like a normal child, at most sucking a little harder, and only in the few times when it was most difficult to suppress, he would stick out his tongue to lick the surface of the round work of art, and the result was just to make his mother giggle as if she was itchy.
Although he didn't know much about history, Sandy at least knew that in the Middle Ages in his original world, people were very superstitious, and this world couldn't be considered the Middle Ages - swords and magic existed, so monsters and demons also existed. Burning witches here might not be a foolish act but a meaningful act... In other words, if he behaved too abnormally, not like a child under one year old, especially if he did something that made his mother feel physically disgusted from a female perspective, even if his parents protected him out of instinctive love, the safety of the family might not be maintained.
Because he had climbed onto the windowsill and approached the open door, Sandy knew that he was probably in the countryside, with large fields around the house and rows of houses and wisps of smoke from cooking in the distance... He knew that the option of "retiring as a couple" was a sure thing and there was no discount. If nothing unexpected happened, it would probably be easy for him to live a stable life until adulthood, and he didn't want to ruin this... Besides, he had already experienced the consequences of completely succumbing to desire in his previous life.
In this conscious repression, Sandy did not realize that as time passed, his thoughts were changing subtly.
At the age of one, his parents began to feed him liquid food, and a year later, two-year-old Sandy realized that he had to be weaned like the children in the old world - his mother did not lift her shirt in front of him for two weeks, but when he thought about it, he was surprised that he did not seem to feel too disappointed.
Was it because he had seen Loreya's breasts so many times that he was tired of them? Or was it because his body was gradually adapting to the brain that seemed to have been brought over from the previous world and shifting into the normal operating mode of a normal child?
Sandy tried to explain this change from a rational perspective, but when he looked at Loria's back as she washed clothes, he suddenly realized that his view of this woman seemed to have changed as well.
He loved his parents in his previous life, and he still felt sad when he thought about having to be buried by them with a broken body. However, after being taken care of by the Elius couple for two years, although he still remembered what his parents looked like and his previous life, a family portrait gradually appeared in his mind.
When his father, who was obviously a close combatant, was doing his morning sword-wielding exercises in the yard, and his mother was hanging up the washed clothes not far away, he thought about asking them, "Is there anything I can help with?" However, when he thought of his body that was not even as tall as a man's knees, he suppressed the thought.
When this thought first came to Sandy, he was shocked and felt guilty as if he had betrayed someone.
Of course he quickly put this feeling behind him, but what he didn't realize was that his subconscious transformation was actually a bit like his reaction in his previous life when he found a new girl and thought of his "ex" who he was actually about to break up with.
In his previous life, Sandy did not regard the Internet or games as necessities in his life. In his opinion, going to bed with a girl he liked or traveling with friends or female companions were much more interesting. However, in this world without mobile phones and the Internet, he still felt uncomfortable and bored, especially now that although he was allowed to crawl around the house and even the yard, his parents would lock the doors of the house and the yard every time they had to go out, and his mother seemed to use magic to reinforce some invisible defense system.
He could only see the world outside the courtyard wall through the windows on the second floor and was unable to leave this area, let alone go out and make friends.
This feeling is very uncomfortable, but it is not that there is no alternative entertainment... Toys for preschoolers are not acceptable. At most, the building blocks similar to the Luban locks that my father brought back from the market are a bit interesting... Sandy, who didn't like reading very much, never felt grateful that there were so many books in this new home.
Due to the "language barrier" option that he now regretted, he couldn't understand the words in all the books, but perhaps it was because of luck, there was a basic dictionary at a height that his body could reach.
The illiteracy rate in this world is probably dozens of times higher than that in Japan, so even if this dictionary is not for children who are just learning to speak, it is also illustrated. I don't know who compiled it, but after seeing those unique illustrations, Sandy actually found them very interesting, so he crawled into the study room to learn the language when his parents were out or late at night or in the early morning, as if he had returned to the time when he first had a little interest in learning English.
Once such behavior becomes a habit out of boredom, it is hard not to attract the attention of others.
Not long after he slipped into the study for the twentieth time before sunrise, holding a candle tray, the door of the study opened quietly behind Sandy, who was sitting facing the bookcase and looking down at the open dictionary.
It's not that any sound suppression spells were used, it's simply because the door was designed to reduce noise as much as possible in order to avoid disturbing the user. It also has daily maintenance, and the people who come in know how to hide their footsteps and even their breath in a dangerous environment.
So, when Sandy realized that there was a 6-foot-tall man squatting behind him like a white gorilla, he was so scared that he almost knocked over the candle tray next to him with his knee.
But Val covered his mouth the moment he almost screamed, put the index finger of his other hand on his lips and said: "Your mother is still asleep."
Then the questioning began - Sandy was forced to read out all the words he knew with an inexplicable sense of fear, and then his father in this life was so excited that he almost broke the request he had just told his son.
The next day, or rather the morning of the same day, under Val's instructions, Sandy asked his mother if he could go into the study to find a book to read. Val calmly said that he could use his part-time job time to teach his son to read.
The mother, who was washing the dishes after breakfast, turned her back to the father and son and said, "So he has been reading that dictionary at night~~?"
These words shocked Val and almost frightened Sandy - there was no doubt that his mother had known for a long time that he had sneaked into the study to study at night or when no one was at home, but why didn't she point it out earlier?
Then Loreya turned around and told Val in a helpless tone: "Honey, are you planning to claim his talent as your own achievement?"
Faced with this accusation, which Sandy felt was not far from the truth, Val did not admit it with a smile or defend himself seriously. Instead, he put on a smug expression and told his wife: "What difference does it make? Isn't this child's genius inherited from my genes~?"
"I admit that this is the good side, but if he inherits the bad side, how are you going to be responsible?"
The argument soon began because of the man's boasting, but Sandy didn't feel uneasy - this was not the first time that this generally loving couple had quarreled in front of him at home, but he could feel that most of the time they were just making limited sarcasm at each other like bad friends, and neither of them had ever thrown things or slammed the door and left.
On the contrary, Sandy once again found her parents interesting this morning, as well as her life after rebirth.
Also, Loreya was wearing an apron, with her hands on her hips and her chest puffed out, looking angry. She was very attractive...
However, the problem still had to be solved. After the quarrel, Loreya did not deny Val's plan and agreed to let her husband teach their son to read.
Sandy found it a little strange. He subconsciously thought that he should be taught by his mother who seemed more intellectual. But obviously, Val, who gave people the impression of being a warrior and having a sloppy personality since birth, was considered more suitable.
During the learning process, Sandy also found that his father was a very competent tutor. Although there was no comparison with his mother, Sandy had a teacher when he learned English in his previous life. He felt that if Val was born in his world and time, he might become a very likable teacher.
Half a year later, when Sandy was almost ready to throw away the picture dictionary and start reading text-only textbooks, he raised the question of why it was not his mother who taught him.
Val first "accused" his son of being more attached to Lori since he was a child, and then gave an explanation: "Because your mother doesn't know how to teach people."
Sandy accepted this explanation, just like athletes and coaches on the field often cannot exchange identities, but to be honest, I still hope that my mother can teach me... Although the desire to see the scene of the heavy objects pressing on the table while eating has faded.
Then Sandy asked Val another question: "Then how come you are so good at teaching people? And reading…"
"Asshole!" The boy's hair was immediately ruffled by a big hand. "Do you think I'm just a strong-limbed, simple-minded reckless man?!"
Besides, Val rarely went into the study, and Loreya spent much more time in there.
At this time, Sandy has already learned that this world is just like those RPG games, with adventurers, although according to the literal translation of the language here, the meaning of this term is closer to "guardian".
There are various dangerous creatures in all known parts of the world, collectively referred to as "enemies". Many of them can be understood as monsters but that is not accurate. Some enemies will actively attack intelligent creatures (here called intellectual species) or civilized settlements, while others are hunted or captured because they are very powerful and easily angered, but their organs are of great value... In short, the adventurer's task is to fight them and ensure that they do not endanger their own people or other friendly civilizations of different species, or to hunt them down to gain tangible benefits.
The Elius couple were once official adventurers, the kind that were registered and managed by the guild, but at the young age of just over 20, they applied for temporary retirement and ran away to the countryside to get married and have children.
Val would take on commissions from nearby villages to clean out goblin nests from time to time. This was called odd jobs, and the pay was as low as the difficulty of the task, but it was more like he wanted to find something to do for himself because he couldn't sit still.
My mother no longer does her previous job. When she goes out, she basically goes to the village or town to buy things, such as candles for lighting the house... In fact, Sandy's night reading was exposed because she noticed that the use of candles suddenly increased in half a month.
"So my father and mother used to protect other people..."
Sandy said in a flattering tone -
"…Why did you stop doing it later?"
He did not ignore the brief haze in Val's eyes when he answered: "A lot of things happened..."
Although it would seem strange for a child of only a few years old to talk about such topics with his parents from Sandy's previous life, he later realized that in this world without compulsory education, pensions, and medical insurance, precocious puberty was not considered an abnormality.
So he was somewhat disappointed to find that in the eyes of his parents, he could learn to read quickly and had strong physical fitness. At least to the current level, although they were happy, they were not ecstatic and thought their child was a genius.
After all, Val said that when he was a child, he could already ride a horse and shoot arrows. Living a comfortable life is the privilege of city dwellers, and city dwellers need to pay mercenaries or adventurers from the countryside to protect themselves, while providing convenient trading places for surrounding residents - this is the ecological chain of civilization.
So Sandy, who had been secretly learning to read and write because he was worried about being stared at strangely, gradually relaxed after he started receiving formal lessons from his father, thinking that it was no big deal if he revealed his unusual side earlier.
But as if by some twist of fate, this casualness brought some problems.
From the moment she was born...or rather, from the moment she began to be able to crawl around the house without restrictions at any time and anywhere, Sandy noticed something unusual.
His parents, Lorelia and Val, a loving couple, seemed to have no necessary nightlife.
Originally, one would imagine that after dark, there should be women's moans, men's heavy breathing and the squeaking sounds of the bed without a spring mattress coming from the master bedroom on the second floor. However, Sandy had never heard any of this, even since he was able to crawl freely in the house.
Because of her mother's appearance and figure, her father's youthful vigor, and the intimate acts they sometimes performed in front of their children, Sandy did not think she was the result of the only time her parents had done anything other than sleeping in bed. She just suspected that the couple might have used some magic to hide the sounds that would be made at night.
If you think about it carefully, doing this in this small village house where no one else is around is really a move that takes the child's growth into consideration.
One day when he was 4 years old, Sandy came up with a mischievous idea similar to a code-breaking puzzle - if he couldn't hear that kind of sound, that is, he couldn't break in with excuses like "I heard some strange noises coming from your room" or "Is Dad bullying Mom?" Then he could make a surprise visit by saying that he had a nightmare and wanted to sleep with his parents tonight.
The problem was that since there was no sound coming from the master bedroom, he didn't know when Lori and Val would go out for their nightlife. Of course, this problem was not difficult to solve - Sandy had come to the corridor after bedtime to observe the master bedroom door from as far away as possible, and when his room was pitch black, he saw light from candles or oil lamps seeping out from under the crack of his parents' door. He calculated that sometimes this light would last for more than an hour.
He thought it was natural - if Val had sex with Lori in the dark, wouldn't it be a shame if he couldn't appreciate his mother's plump and hot body?
So over the course of a few days, after his mother turned off the lights in her room and said "good night", Sandy would wait in bed for about twenty minutes - there seemed to be a timekeeping prop in this world that could be charged by magic, similar to an hourglass, which was placed on his bedside table after he learned to speak.
Twenty minutes was probably the most intense time for Loria and Val to exercise... Whenever Sandy thought of this, he showed an evil smile.
Then he lifted his quilt, tiptoed out of his room, and went to the corridor to observe the orange light under the crack of the door. If there was no orange light, he would go back to sleep disappointed. When he observed it, the boy would no longer tiptoe, but walk towards his parents' dormitory as fast as possible but not so fast that it would make such a noise that it could be heard throughout the building.
In order to create the illusion that he was scared out of his wits by a nightmare, he hugged the quilt tightly after going to bed to make himself warm as much as possible, and sweated a little. However, when the boy with a terrified expression pushed open the unlocked door of the master bedroom, he stood still beside the door because of the dislocated scene he was in.
Sandy's guess was correct. Her parents used a sound-suppressing magic to cover up the "noise" caused by the night incident. However, what Sandy didn't know was that this magic had a flaw - it did not unilaterally erase the sound coming from one direction, but instead established a barrier in the air to prevent oscillations.
Soundproofing works both ways, which is why when Sandy saw a man and a woman entangled in the bedroom, the latter were unaware of the sound of the door being suddenly pushed open.
The light in the parents' room was dim, but it was not so dim that one could not see the bodies of the two people clearly - when Val pressed on Lori and sweated, the woman's open mouth was obviously making high-pitched moans, and the bed was also protesting shrilly against the impact it was bearing. Even the shaking amplitude of the pair of huge breasts made it easy for the viewer to imagine the obscene sound of the rippling.
The boy seemed to have walked into a pornographic pantomime. For a moment, he forgot that he was going to shout at the bed that he was having a nightmare. He just stared blankly at what was happening in front of him.
There was another reason that made his time seem to have stopped, and that was Loreya's appearance.
Although he had seen her naked body since birth, and later had the opportunity to feel her heavy mass under the buoyancy of buoyancy during their bathing together, he had never seen his mother and father enjoying each other.
The sturdy man's movements and expressions seemed extremely devoted, as if he was enjoying his wife's body for the first time or trying to fill the woman's belly on his wedding night.
And that woman was being "ravaged" by her husband in this position - her two white thighs, which turned dark yellow under the candlelight, were placed on the man's shoulders and pounded from top to bottom like a pile driver, and her plump breasts were swinging like fruits in the rain, which made her look extremely attractive.
At this moment, Sandy truly understood what a lucky man his father was, and seeing his mother's intoxicated look and her hands repeatedly scratching his father's shoulders and arms, he would never misunderstand that she was faking her reaction and accommodating the self-esteem that all men have.
Sandy stood by the half-open door, staring at the silent scene that should have been filled with spring sounds. He didn't intend to watch the whole process without fear because of the two people's devotion on the bed and the sound barrier, but he was simply shocked by the scene...mainly the beauty and charm of Lorelia's naked body outside the bathroom...
And when Val relied on the flexibility of Loreya's body to press her legs against the bed sheet, leaned over to kiss her lips and then began to lick the woman's neck and profile, she closed her eyes, moaned inaudibly to Sandy, and turned her head to the left.
"...?"
Sandy did not realize the danger of this action, but his mother saw him through her half-open eyelids.
He also saw that her eyes widened with undisguised astonishment—
"!"
At this moment, Sandy's best choice would be to immediately keep the dazed expression she had when she came in and ask "Mom and Dad, what are you doing?" The next best choice would be to continue to remain silent and shocked, waiting for the two people on the bed to make their own reactions.
But Sandy actually had the worst reaction - the next moment his eyes met Loreya's, he turned and retreated to the corridor, and subconsciously closed the door.
This was his reaction when he ran into one of his male seniors doing the same thing during a trip. His muscle memory triggered the action before his brain did, and by the time he returned to the corridor and realized what he had just done, he no longer had a second chance to correct his behavior.
Inside the room, Val felt his wife's body suddenly stiffen just now - this reaction was just like when the two of them were being intimate in the tent but the warning array she had set up detected the approach of an enemy.
So he immediately looked in the direction she was facing, but all he saw was a door that was closed tightly just like the one they had started with.
"What's wrong...?"
"No, nothing... huh..."
Loreya showed a relaxed expression and reached out a hand to touch her husband's cheek.
"…It reminded me of that time again."
Just as she expected, this casual remark immediately amplified the man's desire, causing him to grin and say, "Ah, the feeling of being surrounded is really exciting~~" while intensifying his abuse of his wife.
"Ah...ah!...my dear!"
The next morning, everything was normal.
No matter how Sandy observed, he could not find any difference in the atmosphere at home from before. But because of this, the boy pretended to be calm on the surface, but he felt more and more uneasy inside.
In fact, this reminded him of the period before the end of his life - he had five years to sort out the kidnapping incident that led to him being sent to this world. Since he did not suffer from amnesia due to stress trauma, his self-preservation instinct to learn lessons could not stop him from reversely deducing his own negligence or various signs.
So he felt that the way his mother behaved the next day... seemed somewhat similar to the way his girlfriend, who had taken away his freedom and life, behaved a few days before the operation.
Maybe he was worrying too much, or maybe he was just imagining things, but throughout the day, when Sandy and his mother made eye contact, he thought that Lori's eyes showed suspicion and wariness of him.
To him, if this judgment was correct, his mother's reaction could not be considered strange.
Because the strange thing was Sandy himself - he realized what he had done wrong almost as soon as he fled back to his room last night.
He avoided the first two choices that seemed most natural for a child of this age. After he and Loria realized that each other's existence had been exposed, he simply stepped out and closed the door, showing that he fully understood what was happening in the bedroom and even considered taking care of the feelings of the person involved.
This was absolutely abnormal - when Sandy tried to recall last night when he might have come into contact with relevant knowledge in his life as if to paralyze himself, he discovered in despair that he had only received imperative teachings from Val and Loreya, respectively, telling him that in most cases he was not allowed to completely expose his lower body to others, regardless of gender, or to strip girls' clothes.
There was no reason or explanation. They just told him that they would tell him everything after he turned eight, but no later than ten. Before that, he was not allowed to ask questions or seek advice from others. Sandy suspected that the books at home might contain relevant knowledge, but he had never touched them. He also doubted whether he could understand the content with his current vocabulary.
So he was essentially checkmated—he couldn't explain why he did what he did under those circumstances, why a child would understand the meaning of sexual behavior.
He waited for Loreya to find a time to ask to talk to her son alone about this matter. He waited for his mother to tell his father about her discovery and suspicion. He waited for his parents to sit in the living room before dinner and ask him to confess...
But none of this happened.
Not just that day. The following days were all routine—after breakfast, his father taught him cultural lessons, his mother washed the dishes, the afternoon was his free time, but his father suggested that he start practicing swordsmanship and other fighting skills from now on, and in the evening, everyone had dinner together and went to bed... It was as if the accident that night had never happened.
Sandy originally thought that perhaps his mother would never be in the same water with him again, especially after he took a bath with his father once. But two weeks later, Lori told him in the same gentle tone and expression as before that it was time to wash his body, and this time it was her turn to help.
This made Sandy feel extremely panicked, and he even thought of a huge crisis - he chose to become an immortal who could be resurrected at any time in an environment with sufficient fluid volume, and the bathtub or tub at home was large enough for two adults to soak in it together. If his mother, a retired adventurer, took extreme actions out of some strong hostility towards abnormal creatures, he would not even be able to escape from the predicament, and the fact that he "can be resurrected in places like water" would be exposed.
He didn't believe that Loreya had suddenly lost her memory and forgotten what happened that night, but he didn't dare to refuse to go to the bathroom with his mother when his father was around - Val probably didn't know about the incident that night, and he didn't doubt it yet.
But when he sat in the water with his back to Lori, who was silently scrubbing his back, Sandy felt as if he was being whipped.
Perhaps she could no longer tolerate their indifference, or perhaps this was the timing she had arranged, or perhaps she noticed that Sandy's muscles were stiffening as she recalled the end of her previous life more and more frequently, so after 5 minutes, the woman started asking questions.
"Sandy, are you afraid of me?"
Thinking of this, the boy's body trembled involuntarily. Even though Lolaya could not feel the movement of her son's body, the sudden ripples in the water were obvious enough.
Sandy believed that the judgment against him would come soon. Maybe in the next second his biological mother in this life would grab his hair and push him into hot water to drown him, and then resurrect him in the same place, and then do it again, until he was imprisoned by his parents in some kind of seal and sent to the Ministry of Magic for slice research.
However, in the midst of extreme fear, Sandy then heard a sigh from behind.
"So, what did that guy tell you?"
<'That guy'?>
Stunned, Sandy intuitively realized that she seemed to have grasped a life-saving straw offered by the other party, so she immediately tried to understand who Lori was referring to. Of course, she quickly determined that it should be her husband, her father, Val.
However, because he didn't understand the other party's question, Sandy remained silent and said nothing - he also knew that this was equivalent to a tacit attitude. Although it was not the best choice, it might be the safest choice at the moment.
"Is that so..." Loreya then gritted her teeth and said behind her back, "Really, there should be a limit to self-boasting..."
Although he had no idea what his mother was thinking, Sandy suddenly felt that his crisis seemed to be resolved - at the cost of transferring it to Val.
"Okay, honey, forget everything your father said." He began to scrub his hands behind his back again. "Remember, you can only do that kind of thing with a girl after you become an adult."
The silent boy was full of guilt, but he didn't intend to point out that his mother seemed to have completely misunderstood something, and he didn't think much about what would happen if his parents confronted his father and denied it - he just wanted to get out of this big barrel as soon as possible.
By the next morning, although Val seemed fine on the surface, Sandy could see that he was depressed. However, he never looked at Sandy with suspicion or hostility, so the boy knew that he was safe. At the same time, his mother probably taught his father a lesson without saying it out loud.
In fact, Sandy really didn't like women like this - this kind of torture, like putting someone in a cell and asking through a loudspeaker above their head "Do you know why you are here?", was something most people hated.
But even though he seemed to have experienced his mother's terrible side from a side angle, every time he thought of the scene that night and the countless opportunities to appreciate the full view of that body in the water, Sandy couldn't suppress his desire - the desire to grow up quickly and the desire to be able to do what his father was like.
Of course, he was now afraid of his attention to Loreya. This was not only because of the moral and ethical aversion, but also because - if he made a wrong move, how would she react?
——————
Unlike other children who automatically forget their earliest memories of life when they grow old enough, he remembered that it was a miserable rainy night.
He felt as if there was a noose around his neck, unable to breathe, unable to make a sound, and unable to escape from everything that was squeezing him from all sides.
His feet were the first to gain freedom, but the "noose" refused to let him go, as if it wanted him to die before everything began.
His survival instinct once made him want to bite it off, but another instinct told him that it was absolutely impossible.
After the struggle and contest that was probably longer than eternity was over, after his body emerged from the darkness in the order of feet, knees, hips, waist, chest... and finally head, he did not receive any caring gazes or joyful congratulations, but was immediately put aside like an inanimate object.
The white-bearded old man in a cloak who helped him escape death was not paying attention to him at this moment. Instead, he was tightly holding the hand of the pale and haggard young woman lying on a broken bed, with tears in his wrinkled eyes.
"Your Highness... hold on a little longer! I can take you with me..."
As a newborn, he could understand their language, but because his body was still that of a baby, all his confusion and curiosity about the situation could only turn into meaningless cries.
The woman who heard the baby's cry showed a relieved expression, and did not show the horror she had when she first learned that her baby was born in a posterior position.
She used her slender hands, which were probably not even able to tear a piece of paper, to hold the old man's palm, which was as thin as tree bark, and interrupted his pleading, telling him: "No need... No need to run away... My time has come..."
"Your Highness…"
"Take good care of him, Alzopanzer, tell him... his name is 'Kain', don't let him carry my last name... but he must know who he is... must know... he will... save..."
"…"
When the woman's voice became quieter and quieter, and she finally clenched the old man's hand and fell limply onto the dirty bed sheet, perhaps because his brain, which was still overloaded with information, caught the intense emotions of the people around him, he, who had been given a new name "Kaiyin", cried for the first time since he came into this world...
——————
Sandy has been in this world for 5 years, but has never left home.
This is not to say that he had never left the two-story country house, but that he had never left the yard and gone further.
It would not be right to say that Sandy was not afraid of the outside world at all - the common sense of this world could not be measured by his memory, and the talents he chose in front of the fox demon were not yet obvious at his current stage as a child.
But on this day, Sandy made a request during dinner: "Um... Dad, can I go out?"
"...?"
The two adults at the table were stunned when they heard this.
Val asked, "What are you going to do?"
"Oh," Sandy realized that he had misspoken, "I'm not saying I'm going out now, but I was thinking...that..."
It was rare for him to stutter when speaking in the Elius family. From the day he could speak, Sandy was a smart child that his parents were very proud of. He was always quick-witted and eloquent.
When Sandy described this request in detail, he suddenly realized what was going on with the feeling of depression that had been hidden in his subconscious.
He is not afraid of the act of leaving home itself, but the process of asking for permission to leave home.
This was not a good memory in his memory.
Sandy, or rather, Miao Muwu's parents, arranged a path for him to take early on so that he could smoothly take over a new business empire. He was not allowed to deviate from this path when he was a child - if he wanted to go out and have fun with his friends, he had to finish his homework, and his test scores could not drop to B grade.
Later, the time spent on extracurricular tutoring and learning how to socialize with his parents greatly compressed his personal time. Fortunately, his intellectual talent was highlighted in elementary school, allowing him to cope with these things more easily than many of his peers. In theory, he could get more spare time than many of his peers who came from strict families but lacked talent.
However, Takeshi Naegi's spare time does not mean freedom.
Until he was admitted to a university where his parents could rest assured, even if he did complete his homework and other routine tasks, he could not just close his exercise book and go out - every time he left home, he had to get his parents' permission, and there were strict time limits on how long he could stay outside. Things like "sleeping over at a friend's house" were completely impossible before high school, and if the other party was a woman, he could only choose to make a false move before college.
Regardless of his age, Miao Muwu had been punished for intentional or unintentional violations in this regard, sometimes even extremely severe punishments such as deprivation of food. He had no brothers or sisters at home, no one who would intercede for him, and his parents had a completely consistent attitude in this regard - his father was a son-in-law in a sense, and his mother was a lady from a famous family, and she also grew up in strict iron discipline. In her words, "Xiao Wu, if I asked you to follow the rules of my family, you wouldn't even dare to have those thoughts..."
Growing up in this environment, perhaps it was his nature, he magnified his sneaky behavior in all aspects during college, especially in his interactions with the opposite sex. But no matter when, even if he had lived in his own house to go to college, he would always want to ask "Can I go out now?" before he went out.
Katsumi Furuto, who semi-lived with him for a time, once joked about him, saying that she heard him talking in his sleep one morning and asked this question in a very serious tone, but he suspected that she would never understand the uneasiness and anxiety hidden behind his reserved question.
Now he asked the same question to the parents of the new student, and subconsciously did not expect any affirmative response.
However, Val and Loreya just looked at each other, and then the husband said, "By the way, are we running low on chili oil pods?"
The flavor of Val's food is relatively strong. Sandy knows that chili oil pods are a relatively cheap spice in this world or this region, and the family will buy a batch of them every once in a while.
Hearing Val's question, Lori said, "I guess so, but Sandy just now..."
"Take him out there tomorrow," Val said with a smile, "to see the world outside."
Sandy guessed what Val was thinking as soon as he mentioned buying household items, but surprisingly, Loreya didn't seem to think about it at all.
She showed an embarrassment and looked at Sandy with innocent eyes: "Should I take him around the village first?"
"What's going on in the village?" Val waved his hand nonchalantly. "It's either farmland or pasture. As for farming, raising cattle, or forging iron, it's still too early for him. Besides, judging by his appearance, he will definitely follow me in the future - you can take him to the entrance of the Adventurer's Guild~~"
Sandy's mind raced. Ever since he learned to read from his father, Val seemed to have deliberately guided him to read the autobiographies of famous adventurers or biographies written by others, and the heroic stories in legends and myths. As for fairy tales, Loreya did recommend them, but Sandy bluntly said that he didn't like them, which made Val laugh and Loreya looked a little disappointed.
To be fair, Sandy had little interest in fighting monsters with swords or staffs, just like he had little interest in computer games of that kind. However, since he had chosen some bonus characteristics at birth, including extraordinary luck and the ability to be resurrected infinitely in water, he felt that there was no harm in becoming an adventurer and hunting monsters early on.
More importantly, even if he was not a game geek, he hardly ever played those 18+ RPGs or GALs. He understood through various myths and legends from his past and present lives that in a world that was not yet at the technological level of the Industrial Revolution, a man's bravery might be more attractive to the opposite sex than his knowledge - he was not just thinking about building his own harem.
As for wealth? He suspected that much of the knowledge he had learned in his previous life would be useless here. Maybe the reward for killing a dragon in one morning would be more than the income from his ten years of hard work in researching and promoting science and technology. Not to mention that the concept of intellectual property rights here was probably a joke.
So in the face of Val's judgment and expectations, Sandy's eyes lit up.
"Well, I want to go to the Adventurer's Guild to take a look~~"
Seeing his son like this, Val was even more proud. He laughed and said, "Ahahahaha! It turns out he's my son!"
Loreya frowned, showing an uneasy mood, and asked Sandy: "Dear, what I want to tell you is that adventurers are very dangerous. If you are not careful..."
"Yeah, I know, Mom!" Sandy said with great confidence, "But being an adventurer can protect others, right? I want to be able to protect my friends and family when I grow up!"
"Well..."
Loreya was speechless for a moment after hearing this, but the slightly relieved expression on her face, as if saying "I really can't do anything about you~", was not fake.
Sandy saw it all clearly, and the boy who had hidden his true wishes suddenly felt a little guilty, not only because he did not explain all the reasons, but also because he subconsciously grasped his mother's interests - Lori likes men like Val who are confident, strong and cheerful, and he just used his conversation skills from his previous life to try to please her.
Val smiled even more happily: "Hehehe! Great! So ambitious!"
"But...isn't this a bit too fast?"
"There's nothing wrong with being precocious!" Val didn't think there was any other reason for his son's rapid growth. "When I was his age, I was already around the house..."
Suddenly, Loreya coughed, then stared at Val's smug face with wide eyes.
"!"
The man stopped talking immediately, but soon continued his previous words unnaturally: "... Chasing mice around the house, even a fierce cat is not as efficient as me--!"
"…"
Sandy could clearly see that Val was about to say something inappropriate for children, but Loreya stopped him with her eyes. He suspected that this was probably the follow-up effect of Loreya's warning to her husband after they took a bath together that day.
"Anyway, I'll take him there tomorrow morning," Loreya changed the subject or returned to the main topic, "Sandy, go to bed early tonight and get some rest. We have a long journey tomorrow."
"OK."
Although Loreya asked this, Sandy naturally suffered from insomnia.
Although he had had few entertainment activities since he was born and had looked out into the distance countless times from behind the second-floor window, and was even taken to the roof by Val to capture the 360-degree view of the home in his mind like a photo, he was still excited about actually being inside the "photo".
After five years, he can finally go out.
At this moment, Sandy had a strange feeling - he felt that his previous life was just a dream, and the world after rebirth was the reality... If he admitted this illusion, then at the end of that dream he suffered pain that ordinary people could not bear, and then woke up.