Chapter 1: The Norton Orphanage in North Hollywood
"I'm sorry, Alex, I don't want this either. If we stay together, my dad…" The long-haired woman released the hand she had held for ten years, turned away without a backward glance, and walked into the distance until she disappeared from sight.
"Anna…"
The young man once called Alex whispered the name, then cracked open another can of beer. Months had already passed, yet every time the memory of that breakup scene resurfaced, a sharp pain still stabbed through his chest. Ten years of love—how could it not hurt?
In truth, he had always known this moment would come sooner or later. He had simply clung to the illusion that it never would. Reality had finally burst that fragile bubble.
He was an orphan who had grown up drifting between street corners and the welfare system. After dropping out of junior high, he had taught himself enough to become a movie projectionist. Meanwhile, Anna had spent the last decade climbing the ladder until she became a renowned music producer. The gap between them had grown wider and wider—one lost in a hazy world of films, the other a celebrated name raking in money by the day. A breakup was only natural, wasn't it?
Anyone who had grown up in cold loneliness could only numb the pain with alcohol once their single ray of light was gone.
Another can went down. Suddenly Alex felt his breathing constrict, his whole body turning weak. He remembered the alcohol allergy he hadn't suffered in years—the last attack had nearly killed him.
Was this the end? His eyelids grew too heavy to lift. Regret flooded his heart. I was already on the fringes of the entertainment world.
Why didn't I try harder? If I had become a dazzling superstar, would any of this have happened?
...
"Waaah~"
The crisp cry of an infant rang out. Alex's eyes snapped open, and the horrifying truth slammed into him: he had become a baby—an abandoned infant lying alone at the entrance of an orphanage.
Could it be… reincarnation? Had he returned to the exact moment he was abandoned? Did that mean he could start over, seize control of his life, and do everything right this time?
The thought had barely formed before dizziness crashed over him. An infant's brain simply couldn't handle that much cognition; he was already running out of oxygen.
Damn it! Am I going to die right after being reborn? Before consciousness slipped away, he caught a glimpse of a white elderly woman picking him up.
Some higher power in the heavens had played a not-too-small, not-too-large joke on him. He had been reborn as an abandoned child in 1980, but the location had changed from the ancient Eastern nation to the Norton Orphanage in North Hollywood, Los Angeles.
From the ornate English letters engraved on the necklace around his neck, he received a new name—Ryan Jenkins.
I've turned into a little white kid? That was the reality Ryan (formerly Alex) had no choice but to accept.
Life in the orphanage was cold and monotonous. Yet a burning ambition always smoldered inside Ryan, pushing him to absorb every scrap of knowledge he could reach. Thanks to his extraordinary linguistic talent in this life and the patient guidance of the old director, he could already speak, read, and write fluent English by the age of four.
Staying in the orphanage forever was no long-term plan, but he didn't know what else to do, so he immersed himself in studying and reading. Before he realized it, he had gone through every book in the library several times over.
That year, in order to secure more funding, the orphanage arranged for children four and older to join Hollywood's massive Halloween parade. Only then did Ryan discover that the legendary Hollywood was just south of the orphanage.
The moment he stepped onto the Walk of Fame, every classic movie he had watched in his previous life and every English song he had ever heard flashed through his mind with crystal clarity, as if they had been carved directly into his memory.
The parade brought him an unprecedented sense of lucidity. As time passed, Ryan realized his body was far stronger than any other child his age, his mind exceptionally sharp, his sensitivity to music and rhythm uncanny, and his ability to construct vivid scenes and words beyond the ordinary.
He didn't know yet whether he possessed any real acting talent, but from the second he had opened his eyes in this new life, he had been performing—first as an infant, then as a child. In the future he would perform as a teenager and a young man. Even if some people found him a little strange, no one ever suspected the truth. Acting had become pure instinct.
Did the heavens hear my dying wish back then and decide to let me roll around in Hollywood? Ryan finally understood what that burning ambition inside him was: to become a dazzling, world-famous superstar.
That was fine. Maybe he would even get to meet the stars he had loved most in his previous life and become friends with them.
Although Ryan knew Hollywood was a ruthless arena of fame and fortune rather than a dreamy theater of dreams, he still set himself an impossibly lofty goal. Since he had been given a second life, he might as well chase the wild fantasies he had never achieved before.
With a clear target, Ryan threw himself into learning with even greater fervor. He studied painting and music with volunteer students from the art academy, learned Spanish and Italian from the Hispanic and European immigrant staff—because he would eventually need a believable reason for his flawless foreign accents in future Hollywood roles—and absorbed everything related to the arts. He also began trying to turn the vivid images in his mind into written words, practicing relentlessly for two full years until he gradually developed his own style and voice.
Director Katie Silverman had noticed Ryan early on. She had always considered him the brightest child in the orphanage, though she found it odd that no one ever wanted to adopt him. Everyone said his personality was too withdrawn and eccentric.
Ryan felt a pang of regret. Among those who adopted orphans were millionaires—sometimes even billionaires. He had once daydreamed about becoming one of those "born with a silver spoon" kids, but some things seemed to have been decided the moment he reincarnated. Even at six years old, he was still living here.
Katie Silverman was Ryan's only reader. Perhaps because she herself was Jewish and Ryan showed faint Jewish features, she had been surprised at first, but she soon grew accustomed to the existence of this child genius.
She collected every practice piece Ryan wrote, selected the best few sci-fi short stories, and mailed them to an old friend at a magazine. Against all expectations, the stories were published.
When Ryan saw the magazine the old director handed him, he knew every ounce of effort over the past few years had been worth it. Time to begin—for the sake of the future.
Aside from his regular physical training and studies, Ryan devoted himself entirely to writing—or rather, to "borrowing" stories. He began adapting famous children's films into novellas and short stories.
Novels and films were different mediums. Converting a movie into text that still felt original and wouldn't cause problems later required careful work, but it didn't trouble him much. With Director Katie Silverman's help, adaptations of Home Alone, Toy Story, and several others were successfully published. Ryan received his first royalty checks, and the old director even opened a bank account in his name.
None of that satisfied him. He needed a heavyweight calling card—something that could pry open Hollywood's doors even if things went badly later. So he set his sights on one massively influential work: Jurassic Park.
He had never read the original novel, so he adapted directly from the film. To match his six-year-old identity, he shifted the main protagonist to a young boy instead of Dr. Grant.
Even with the movie as reference, Ryan asked Director Katie Silverman to help him gather piles of information on dinosaurs and cloning so no one would suspect anything. The novel—under 250,000 words—took him nearly four months of constant revision to complete.
From the first stroke of the pen to the final publication, the old director had been invaluable. This Jewish woman possessed astonishing social connections.
By the early winter of 1986, after months of quiet sales, the novel cracked the top ten on the national bestseller list and brought Ryan a huge royalty windfall.
Around the same time, Director Katie Silverman retired for health reasons. The new director was a Black woman named Macy Washington. Ryan immediately sensed the disgust and greed in her eyes whenever she looked at the orphans.
Once the obese, pig-like woman took charge, the orphanage's living standards plummeted. Going hungry became routine. Verbal abuse, beatings, and humiliation turned into daily occurrences. She even exploited loopholes in the adoption system, partnering with shady middlemen to turn the orphanage into a human trafficking ring. The children became commodities.
After reading a reply letter from Analog Science Fiction magazine, Director Macy Washington fixed her sights on Ryan. She used her guardianship authority to check his bank account and was blinded by the string of zeros she saw.
Such an enormous sum belonging to a mere child—what could that be if not a heaven-sent opportunity?
Things were not as simple as she imagined. Before leaving, Director Katie Silverman had foreseen the trouble this money might cause. She had quietly arranged for Ryan to have a reliable lawyer. Obtaining the funds without alerting that lawyer was almost impossible. The best route was to win Ryan's absolute trust and cooperation.
Unfortunately for her, she had no idea that inside this child's body lived a soul whose intelligence far surpassed her own. Her attempts at flattery, bribery, and deception looked like clownish circus acts to him. Yet his age and the mismatch between his mind and his physical body meant he had no real power to resist.
Starvation, scolding, cursing, even beatings might have terrified other children, but Ryan was never afraid. In his previous life he had endured far harsher childhood ordeals; he had survived worse.
So the "black pig" director simply locked him in an isolated room and posted two Black orderlies to watch him in shifts. As long as he refused to yield, he would never taste freedom again.
Time slipped into 1987. Ryan turned seven for the second time. Dark clouds now covered his sky. He began searching for any opportunity. Being controlled and waiting passively was not the fate he wanted. Although he had left the orphanage only a handful of times in seven years, he was determined to break out of this cage. Only the vast sky outside could support the wings he meant to spread.
After days of relentless effort, the door that had sealed away his sky finally had its hinges removed. The moment the Black orderly stepped away to use the bathroom, Ryan slipped out.
When the first ray of morning light fell from the sky and touched his eyes, Ryan's body trembled faintly. He understood, at last, just how precious freedom truly was to a human being.