Immortality Starts With Selling Pills

Chapter 2: Chapter 2: The Stack Of Cliches

She was a young woman who appeared to be in her late twenties. She wore a Black turtleneck with a cherry red skirt that highlighted her figure to its fullest.

Even in the middle of the panic, she looked so beautiful. Like the most precious thing he had ever seen in his life.

Her dark hair was tied into a messy bun in the back. Her eyes were swollen from all the crying, and he could see stains of tears on her cheeks.

It looked like she had not rested for hours, but that did not bother her. But at this moment, she cared nothing about that, and all of her attention was on him entirely.

”What happened? Is something hurt? Tell me.”

Overwhelmed by her questions, Derrick could not utter a word.

How did I write my characters to handle transmigration again?

After years of novel writing and learning to read people, how they behave, Derrick had learned what the best thing to do in this situation was.

”Tell me if something is wrong. I found you collapsed right on the porch of the house three hours ago. You have been like this ever since...”

Her hands trembled as she smoothed his hair back, over and over, like the motion alone might keep something from breaking.

”T-three hours, Derrick...three hours. I thought I was going to lose you and no one would even tell me why. All the doctors I called only said one thing, there is nothing wrong with you.”

She went on speaking without pause; her voice was becoming incoherent.

Derrick looked at his own hands. He was no longer in his own body; he was wearing the skin of someone else. But for some reason, the name was the same as he had in his old life.

Which made him wonder if his transmigration had something to do with it.

”Transmigration,” he thought, half delirious with disbelief. Sixty Chapters of this trope across three different novels, and I never once wrote how much it actually hurts.

How scary it felt to be stranded in a place he had no idea about—where it was or what it was.

”Who are you?” he asked. Derrick did not have the memories of the original Derrick, so he could not pretend to be the boy.

He wanted to tell her the truth, but there was no way for him to do so. She deserved to know that her son, the child she had been raising for years and nurturing, is no longer in this world.

The way her face cracked almost made him regret telling her that. She looked like the ground had been swept from under her feet. Her legs trembled, and she unconsciously sat on the bed.

For one terrible second he thought she might scream.

Instead, she went very still and just stared him in the eyes. With everything she had left, she wanted to deny what she had just heard.

”Derrick. I-it’s Mom. It’s me.”

Her voice cracked and she looked like her whole world was about to shatter.

”I am sorry...” He gave her the truth, because there was no lie built that could survive the next ten minutes intact.

I am sorry...

He didn’t know her. He didn’t know this room, this house, this story stitched onto a stranger’s body. He didn’t know anything at all.

She didn’t cry again.

Tears threatened to spill from her eyes, but she held them like the strong woman she was.

She simply nodded and reached for her phone to call the best doctor she still knew.

...

The doctor was an older man, tired-eyed, with hands gentler than his bedside manner suggested.

”Are you feeling any pain?” He examined Derrick for twenty long minutes with special high-tech products he could carry in his pockets before delivering his verdict to Rebecca alone in the hallway, in a voice pitched, whether on purpose or not, just loud enough to carry back into the room.

”Physically? There are only a few scratches and swollen tissues. It seems like he had a fall, but not a terrible one. I already told you that, but what I did not tell you was his mental state.

There were trauma markers I didn’t want to worry you with until I was certain.

I never expected him to wake up to this. Whatever was the cause of ”this” is gone without a trace, so I cannot give you a definitive answer.”

Derrick heard every word from the side.

So he did not want her to worry? What is that reasoning? Why not just put me in an observation room in a hospital? But, looking at the state of this place, I wonder if they can afford it. Whatever had happened to the original owner of the body before Derrick had arrived to occupy it, it had been bad enough that a doctor decided a comforting lie was kinder than a frightened mother’s right to the truth.

Rebecca’s face went the color of old paper.

”I understand. Thank you, Dr. Don. How about we settle the payment?” She thanked him sincerely before standing up.

”That will be 50,000 Credits.” From the Derrick, who was watching their reaction, he noticed Rebecca’s face freezing. Her eyes widened for a split second, but she instantly recovered and nodded with a forced smile.

”Derrick, I will be right.” She smiled at her son with the same smile and walked out of the room with the doctor. Clearly, that was not a small sum of money for her.

But she did not hesitate to pay all that just for his well-being. Derrick could not help but feel overwhelmed by such foreign emotions.

In less than five minutes, she returned to sit beside the bed as though nothing at all had happened and took his hands in hers.

”Let me just—let me tell you about us in case it helps. But first tell me, what do you know?”

”...The only thing I know is my name. Derrick.”

”Yes, you are Derrick, Derrick Crowne, and I am Rebecca Crowne.”

She told him about herself.

How she was a widow, raising two children alone, and how they were her most precious treasures and she could not bear to lose one of them.

She told him about his twin sister, Cassandra, who is away on a school trip right now, still blissfully unaware that her brother has forgotten everything about her.

Their family lived in the Federation, one of the last true strongholds of ordinary humanity.

They lived in a world where people could turn their bodies into water, or fire, or living steel. They could lift buildings and crush cars with one hand, without using too much effort.

Here people could destroy mountains with their bare hands, and beasts could devour a city if no one defended it.

She told him he had talent since he was small.

Derrick was stronger than anyone his age and sharper, she said, with the unguarded pride only a mother gets away with. He was even selected for a scholarship by the Guild School made by the government to nurse super-abled children.

In this world, powers did not awaken on their own but were gained by consuming drugs/pills.

The more pills you eat and digest, the stronger you grow.

”What happened to me?” Derrick asked in the middle of her explanation.

Rebecca told him everything. As it turns out, he had gone out. He went to buy some pills for himself before he could attend the guild trials and enroll in their scholarship program for the training school.

If he had passed those trials with flying colors, not only would he be allowed to attend the school and change his life, but he would also be granted a free scholarship.

It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that any normal kid would dream of having, and Derrick had it all.

But...

As if fate did not agree to his plans, not only did Derrick not make it to the trails, but he was killed before he got there. His body was disposed of before his own house by the sick bastards who did it.

Then, mid-sentence, something in her face softened into an expression almost like joy.

”Gwen,” she murmured. ”You have to tell Gwen. The two of you promised each other, since you were children, that you’d test together—”

So, there is a childhood sweetheart as well. Derrick said nothing.

If he wanted to survive inside a stranger’s body, in a world that seemed like one of his stories, he had to find a way to get stronger.

Right when Rebecca finished telling him everything important about their lives, a soft chime rang out—a sound only he could hear.

[System Initializing...]

Derrick’s stomach dropped straight through the floor.

Oh, he thought. Of course.