[HagiMatsu] After I Reincarnated, My Childhood Friend Crawled Out of the Ground to Marry Me

[Halloween 2025 and 1107 celebration story. Hagiwara Kenji x Matsuda Jinpei, no switching or breaking them up]

A feel-good chapter written to recover my writing inspiration. Free to read, happy ending.

Reincarnated Hagiwara, 22, who mysteriously survived an explosion, x Matsuda, 26, a zombie bride who hasn't reincarnated and just crawled out of the ground

: You didn't die in the explosion.

Hagiwara Kenji looked at his body, blown to pieces, nodded, and put himself back together, just like assembling his favorite model kit.

: You discovered a box under your bed, stuffed with photos you had no memory of taking. The other person in the pictures was blurry.

Matsuda Jinpei looked up at the photo Hagiwara had handed him. "The person next to you is me, but I can't remember when this was taken."

: You also discovered that you'd successfully picked up where you left off with your childhood friend from your previous life.

Their fingers were interlaced, the rings on their ring fingers sparkling. They were as close as they had been when they reunited.

: Even if they did reunite in a cemetery.

Hagiwara Kenji struggled to free himself from the branches entwined around him, which were gradually turning into human fingers. But when he saw the face of the person crawling out of the ground, he froze.

: And both of you were missing a few memories.

"Can you remember anything from when you were alive?" "No."

"What's the afterlife like?" "I don't know."

"Then what do you remember, Mr. Matsuda?"

Matsuda Jinpei smiled nonchalantly, his gaze passing over their matching rings.

"I remember..."

: What exactly happened?

"As the older dead guy here, don't you have anything to say, Jinpei?"

Hagiwara Kenji took a stack of photos and began retracing the unknown past by visiting the places shown in them.

"Um, if you don't defuse the bomb, it'll explode?"

"That has absolutely nothing to do with what's going on right now!"

Faced with his childhood friend, who had failed to reincarnate and had instead crawled out of the ground, Hagiwara Kenji was beside himself with worry.

Things were getting strange, Hagiwara Kenji thought. His memories still ended at the previous moment, when the countdown on the bomb in front of him was about to hit zero and he was about to head straight for the afterlife in the close-range explosion.

But now he was surrounded by peaceful, ordinary life. Aside from the little problem of occasionally dropping bits of his body, his daily routine was no different from before.

Still, something had definitely gone wrong in the meantime.

He decided to start by looking for anything unusual in his current surroundings.

For instance, the half-open box in front of him.

Hagiwara Kenji opened the box he had no memory of and found a collection of half-worn photographs. In them, he was smiling happily beside someone whose face had been blurred. He turned the photos over and found a ring bearing his name attached to the back. Its matching ring was now on his own ring finger.

All right! Hagiwara Kenji had to admit he didn't remember the photo or the person in it at all. He also had no idea where the box had come from.

He decided to take the photos and ring and visit the places shown in them to investigate.

And came away with Matsuda Jinpei, who claimed that giving him the ring meant they were married, and had crawled out of the ground.

Note: This is a reincarnation AU, and maybe a zombie bride AU. I'm not sure if it counts as one, but the introduction borrows a classic scene from it.

Theme: Only courage and love must never be let down.