Tonight's rain was heavier than last night's.
And last night's had been heavier than the night before.
London's rainy season was always like that, much like Iain's slightly tragic life.
"Another day I can't set up shop."
The boy let out a sigh and leaned against the third-floor window of Solow Orphanage, his chin resting on his folded arms. His breath fogged the glass in a small white patch.
Through that thin mist, and the rain streaking crooked lines down the pane, he could see the streetlamp across the road still burning weakly in the downpour, its halo shredded by the rain into countless strands of trembling gold.
To be honest, Iain didn't really like rainy days.
Not because there was anything wrong with rain itself. It was just that rain and memories went together a little too well, like fried chicken and beer. It always made him think of things he would rather forget.
Like that time in his previous life when he excitedly bought a cosplay outfit and went to a convention hoping to kick off some romantic first love story, only to end up roleplaying as a speed bump on his very first attempt.
It had been raining like this when the truck came, too.
That absurd sensation of brief weightlessness as his body flew through the air was something Iain still remembered vividly. It felt as if someone had casually plucked him off the world's chessboard and dropped him into another square without a second thought.
"As expected of one of the Four Horsemen. One move and I was dead. Fine, I can accept that. But chasing me down to finish the job was just too much." Iain buried his face deeper into his arms.
Yes, chased down.
Come to think of it, he was probably the only person in the world who had ever been killed by a truck twice. Since the achievement was far too niche, Guinness was unlikely to open a special category just for him.
It happened only a few hours after he'd crossed over.
Because hospital maternity bills were expensive, his new white-collar parents had taken him home not long after he'd been reborn.
Then, in London.
In front of another out-of-control truck.
Between the shriek of brakes and the arc of a tiny body flung into the air,
Iain was hit a second time.
The difference was that this time, he survived.
His parents did not.
As for the exact details, his brain hadn't yet developed enough at the time for him to remember clearly. He only knew that before he'd even had the chance to accept his new parents, they'd gone off to reincarnate too.
And just like that,
Iain became an orphan. An orphan with no other relatives, because his parents had been orphans too. He only remembered fragments: a pair of warm hands, an embrace that smelled faintly of milk, a soft "sleep tight" in a thick London accent. After that came sirens and the frantic clatter of a stretcher.
That was where his infant memories ended.
With the sound of the orphanage's iron gate closing behind him.
Sometimes Iain wondered,
if he hadn't been so busy replaying that speed-bump incident in his head that afternoon, if he'd only looked one more time before crossing the street, would the parents in this life never have given birth to a cosmic-grade speed bump like him?
"If that had happened, maybe they'd still be alive."
Iain didn't believe fate was set in stone, so he shook his head and forced the thought away. After all, having lived two lives, the most important lesson he'd learned was not to get lost in pointless thoughts.
That was when you were most likely to get run over by a truck.
When it came to that particular life lesson,
Iain could probably be considered an authority.
Outside, the rain grew heavier. He could hear it drumming on the roof tiles, rattling against the lid of the garbage bin in the yard, pattering over the leaves of that crooked plane tree, each surface producing its own distinct layer of sound. When he couldn't sleep, Iain liked white noise, and rain was one of the best kinds.
But tonight, the sound wasn't making him sleepy.
If anything, it made him even more awake.
"Guess I'm hitting that age where I start showing off how repressed and dramatic I am," Iain muttered, still sprawled on the windowsill, his gaze passing through the curtain of rain to the blurred London skyline beyond.
Early-nineties London didn't look quite like the one from his previous life's memories. There were no glass-walled skyscrapers, no ride-share cars weaving everywhere, no rental bikes on every corner. The sky here felt wider, and the air carried a mix of coal smoke, sulfur, and the damp fishy scent of the Thames.
The phone booth at the corner was still the old red kind. Every now and then a double-decker bus would rumble past, its side plastered with an ad for some cigarette brand.
It was an age that looked glorious on the surface, but was already sliding into decline.
"Still, that's none of my business. I'm the boy who survived catastrophe twice, so clearly I'm destined for all kinds of blessings. First the internet economy, then e-commerce, then Bitcoin, gold, silver, AI, energy stocks... and finally I'll go all in on whatever lunatic ends up running America next while publicly rejecting any Epstein-style cesspit. I shall become the moral and legendary benchmark of a new age of humanity!"
Iain had always been very good at planning his future.
Of course, to make all that happen,
besides social skills,
he also needed a lot of money.
He needed startup capital.
Eleven years old. An orphan. No assets in his name. Only a few pounds of monthly pocket money from the orphanage in his bank account, and not even old enough to open a brokerage account.
At first glance, it didn't seem like the kind of start from which you could seize any real opportunities.
But even that couldn't stump Iain, who liked to think of himself as someone sharpened by two lifetimes and enlightened twice over. Two years ago, he had already seized on the era's rising small-business trend.
The companionship economy.
Honestly, the idea was simple. Sell pets. Not steal them, not scam anyone, not snatch them. Just properly raise cats and dogs, keep them clean and healthy, then sell them to families who wanted a little furry companionship. London had no shortage of lonely people, and lonely people loved nothing more than keeping pets.
Even if they weren't lonely,
Iain had ways of making them feel like they were.
Success belonged to people who knew how to work a crowd.
"The value of teaching yourself psychology is way higher than teaching yourself folk medicine," Iain said as he turned from the window, his eyes falling on the room he lived in now.
Also known as his startup base.
The room was neither large nor small.
Each child at Solow Orphanage was assigned a room of about fifteen square meters, more than enough for an ordinary orphan. For Iain, however, those fifteen square meters were becoming more and more cramped.
Against the wall stood three rows of metal cages in various sizes. Some he'd picked up at secondhand markets; others he'd built himself out of wire mesh and old boards.
Inside them lived all kinds of little furballs.
In the upper left cage were three ginger kittens, huddled together asleep in a lump that looked like a slab of melted butter on toast.
In the middle row was a small black-and-white female mutt, probably some kind of Jack Russell mix, staring at him with bright dark eyes while her tail thumped softly beside her.
On the lower right were fifty or sixty hamsters. Those things really could breed. A few months ago, Iain had started with only two.
The cats and dogs had all sorts of origins. Some were strays he'd picked up off the street. Most, though, were the result of breeding programs he'd started using stray cats and dogs.
A no-capital business didn't always have to start with blood on your hands.
Sometimes it started with being a scavenger.
Either way, Iain's pet business had been moving along steadily. Over the past two years, he had successfully sold twenty-four cats and thirteen dogs.
If not for the tiny bit of responsibility he still felt toward screening buyers, he probably could have sold even more.
After expenses,
his total earnings had reached a full seven or eight hundred pounds.
That was no small amount in this era.
Still, it was a long way from what he considered his "first real pot of gold." What Iain needed wasn't a few hundred pounds, but tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands. Enough to buy in at the bottom before the internet bubble burst. Enough to hoard thousands of Bitcoin while they were still only worth a few dollars.
Enough to be sitting at a computer the day Tesla went public and hit the buy button the second markets opened.
The road ahead was still very long.
But Iain had time.
"This all depends on you lot."
Full of hope, Iain looked toward the cage by the window, the newest addition to the room. He had set it up that very afternoon. Inside lived a tabby cat he had picked up at the orphanage gate before coming back in for the night.
Calling it "picked up" wasn't entirely accurate.
A more precise way of putting it was that the tabby had appeared at the orphanage entrance on its own, sitting on the steps, soaked through by the rain, its fur plastered flat like a crumpled brown rag. Iain had seen it while taking out the trash and crouched down to say a few words to it.
The other party had not verbally refused.
So Iain brought it upstairs.
It was a very typical tabby, its markings spreading out from the spine in rippling circles that formed lovely spirals along its sides.
It was medium-sized and on the thin side, though its frame was nicely proportioned. The markings around its eyes even looked like a pair of spectacles, giving it a faintly comical air. If it were nursed back to health, it would probably turn into quite a beautiful cat.
"I picked out the handsomest husband for you. Why don't you like him?" Iain followed its gaze and looked toward the "handsome tabby" in the other corner of the cage.
Handsome Tabby was the name he'd given a male cat. Don't ask why the name was so lazy.
Lord Iain had dozens upon dozens of cats and dogs under his command. The fact that he gave each one a name at all was already a kindness they could never repay.
As for quality, let's not be too demanding.
The tom was a silver-gray tabby, his coat lighter than the new cat's and his body a size bigger. At the moment he was crouched in the corner of the cage, leisurely licking his paw with the sort of posture that said, I know I'm handsome. He didn't seem especially interested in the female tabby, though that might also have been because Iain had already had him mate quite a few times lately.
"You're still young. Put in a little more effort. Have lots of kittens with this pretty lady and help me out. In the future, I'll build you a retirement cat café."
Iain was attempting to sweet-talk Handsome Tabby.
"And you, why are you so timid? Stop being picky. What exactly is wrong with my Handsome Tabby? It's not like you're some rare calico. Being this fussy is really going to make other cats think less of you."
After working on Handsome Tabby, Iain turned to sweet-talk the female tabby he'd brought home that day.
At the moment, she had curled herself into the corner of the cage.
Her body was angled as far away as possible from the silver-gray tom, tail tucked between her legs, ears flattened tightly against her head. Every inch of her radiated tension.
Whenever the tom moved even slightly in her direction, she let out a low warning sound.
Which in turn made Handsome Tabby shoot Iain a look that clearly said this one's on you.
Yes, he could understand what Iain was saying. Every animal could.
The reason Iain had chosen the pet business in the first place was because, from a very young age, he had kept a secret that belonged to him alone.
He had a cheat.
Not some sort of system.
Animals could understand him, and they were willing to listen.
"Mutated Observation Haki! Hear the voice of all things!" And honestly, Iain wasn't even bragging. When he was in especially good form, he could even talk dead objects like tables and chairs into coming alive.
That was probably his cheat.
But every now and then, when he put on a modest little aw, shucks face,
he couldn't help but feel that this, too, was powerful proof that he simply had an extraordinary gift for persuasion.