Adam followed the same path back.
He retraced every turn Herozen had taken earlier—the open field, the stumps, the thinning shacks, the narrow dirt paths between wooden walls. He didn't know any other route. These memories were still too fragmented to navigate on instinct.
His headache had dulled to a low, persistent throb. His body was exhausted. But his mind wouldn't rest.
They'll come for me.
He knew the type. He'd read about them in dozens of novels, and he'd seen their faces up close today. Boys like the tall one—didn't forget humiliation. They didn't process it, move on, and grow from it. They stewed in it. They replayed the moment over and over until the anger became a plan.
Adam had kicked their leader in the groin. He had tripped the second one face-first into the grass. In front of the third.
There would be consequences. Not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But soon.
Adam clenched his jaw and kept walking.
The slum came back into view. Familiar noise. Familiar smell. Familiar poverty. He slipped between the shacks, passed the spot where children had been playing earlier, and turned toward his house.
The door—if it could be called that—was a piece of rotting wood leaning against the frame. Adam pushed it aside and stepped in.
His mother was there.
She was sitting on the floor near the far wall, folding a piece of wet cloth. She must have just returned from the well. Her hands were red and rough. Her face was tired, but she looked up when Adam came in, and something softened behind her eyes.
Adam froze for a half-second.
This was the part he hadn't prepared for.
The original Adam's parents. His new parents. People who had raised a boy he had never met—a boy who was now dead, replaced by a stranger wearing his skin.
Adam didn't know their mannerisms. Didn't know their inside jokes. Didn't know how the original Adam spoke to them, what he called them, how much he smiled or didn't. Every word out of his mouth was a risk. One wrong sentence, one wrong reaction, and they might sense that something fundamental had changed in their son.
Stay quiet. Stay low. Don't talk more than necessary.
He walked to the corner of the room—the only corner that wasn't occupied by the cot or his mother's workspace—and sat down with his back against the wall. He pulled his knees up and rested his forearms on them. Head slightly down.
Depressed. That was the look he was going for. A boy who'd had a rough day and didn't want to talk about it.
The house was a single room. There was nowhere to hide. No second room, no hallway, no door to close. Everything happened in this space—cooking, sleeping, eating, existing.
His mother watched him sit down.
"Where have you been?"
Adam didn't look up.
"I was with Herozen," he said. His voice was low. Flat. "We went outside the city."
His mother studied him for a moment. Adam could feel her eyes on him. He kept his head down.
She didn't push.
Adam had expected questions—where exactly, doing what, why are you sweating, why do you look like that. But none came. She just watched him, and after a few seconds, she turned back to her cloth.
She understood. Not the truth—she couldn't possibly understand the truth—but she understood the weight. She lived in the same slum. She knew what this place did to children. She had watched her son come home beaten, bruised, and silent more times than Adam could count in the fragmented memories. A bad day wasn't unusual here. It was the default.
His mother finished folding. She set the cloth aside and moved toward the small cooking area—a ring of stones near the entrance with a dented iron pot sitting on top.
"Don't be so down," she said. Her voice was light. Not forced, but gentle in a way that felt practiced—like she'd said this before, many times, to a boy who came home looking exactly like this.
She smiled.
"I'll cook something special today. Your father is going to bring something for you."
Adam's eyes lifted slightly. Something for him?
Before he could respond, footsteps approached the entrance. Heavy. Solid. The kind that came from a body built for labor.
His father ducked through the doorway.
Adam looked at him directly for the first time.
He was tall—taller than Adam expected. His arms were thick, roped with muscle from years of hauling timber and stone. His clothes were torn in places and stained with dirt. His face was hard. Sharp jawline. Deep-set eyes. No warmth on the surface. No softness. He looked like a man who had stopped smiling a long time ago and never found a reason to start again.
Adam blinked. His mother and father were opposites. She was soft. He was stone. She spoke with care. He stood in silence. Two completely different people sharing one broken room.
His father's eyes found Adam. He held the gaze for a second. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small object wrapped in rough brown paper.
He walked to Adam and held it out.
"This is for you, Adam."
No expression. No ceremony. Just the words and the object.
Adam took it from his father's hand. The paper was thin and wrinkled. He unfolded it carefully.
Inside was a rice bowl.
It was small. Clay. Simple. The kind you'd see in any market stall for a few coins. There was nothing special about it—no pattern, no color, no craftsmanship. Just a plain bowl that could hold a single serving of rice.
Adam stared at it.
For a moment, his brain—the one that had been a supercomputer an hour ago—couldn't process what he was looking at.
A bowl. He brought me a bowl.
The thought that followed hit harder than any punch.
This is a gift.
In his previous life, Adam had received phones, games, new shoes, birthday cakes. Things that cost money and meant nothing. Things he threw into a drawer and forgot about.
This bowl had probably cost his father a portion of his daily wage. In a household where meals weren't guaranteed, where his mother washed clothes all day for a handful of coins, where the walls were rotting and the roof leaked—a new bowl was not a small thing.
It was an investment. A belief that tomorrow there would be food to put in it.
Adam's throat tightened.
He looked up at his father. The man's face hadn't changed. Same hard expression. Same silence. But he was still standing there, waiting—not for thanks, but just... standing. As if the act of giving was already more than he was used to.
Adam looked back at the bowl.
A wave of sadness pressed into his chest. Not for himself. For them. For this family that worked twelve hours a day and considered a clay bowl a gift. For this life that the original Adam had endured—and died in—without ever knowing that something extraordinary burned inside his own body.
This is my future, Adam thought. If I don't change it. Hauling timber. Washing clothes. Eating from this bowl until it cracks, and then not eating at all.
He held the bowl in both hands.
Then he took a long, slow breath. The kind that settled everything—the fear, the sadness, the weight of a life he didn't choose.
No.
I will change this.
I will change this.