Subaru was desperately running through the wide, noble and ancient streets of the capital as if the footsteps of death itself were oozing a few feet behind his neck. Humans and demihumans alike looked at him at times with a strange interest, worthy of some strange criature that has fallen from the moon, and the truth is that both his appearance and his behavior seemed to point towards that possibility.
Of course, who wouldn't look at me like that? I'm a fucking loli with the weirdest clothes I've ever seen running around without my parents
For Subaru, the first part of that statement was without a doubt the most ridiculous, emotionally painful, humiliating and inconvenient. He had tried to amalgamate it with the rest of his worries so that its sound wouldn't disturb his head so much, but it was such an obvious fact that he couldn't just ignore it: he had gone from being a teenager with an enviable physical form to a little brat weaker than a fly.
Subaru had to stop when he noticed that he was short of breath, and when he did he felt more fragile and vulnerable than ever. His underdeveloped feet seemed to crack from the unusual efforts he was making with them, and he could tell his heart wasn't able to pump enough blood to them. A little girl isn't exactly the best example of physical fitness any world would offer.
His teeth gnashed like rusty guillotines, his knees were an attempted dam almost unable to contain the enormous pressure that was building up on them and his narrow lungs failed to oxygenate him enough to rescue him from his exhaustion. He felt like a porcelain doll about to fall into a bottomless abyss.
The certain reason for his situation escaped his cognitive and rational filters: he had simply awakened after feeling incalculable pain...in the body of a girl of no more than eleven years. A very adorable girl, too; as if the rest of his situation wasn't enough to function as a Greek comedy.
Why do I feel such a powerful deja vu every time I remember I'm now an evil-looking brat? Subaru thought, whose blue hair had bounced violently when he was running towards the loot house.
As an academic failure with way too much free time, Subaru had discovered and curated tons of stories of all sorts of provenance, genre, and quality, making him a doctor of useless knowledge. And what he was experiencing right now was not unimaginable to the minds of deranged authors in search of easy sales: the idea of reincarnating in another world with a new appearance, sometimes even as an existing character within a story, was something that he had seen on various occasions.
And of course, turning innocent men into helpless little girls was an absurdity that appealed to too many fetishes at the same time, so it had a bit of fame.
Had he known he could be part of that select range of protagonists, Subaru would have desperately begun to study all the sciences and arts of the world with inhuman rigor in the hope that his efforts would succeed in appealing to God.
Yet he had never exactly been a devout believer, nor had he even considered the existence of realities hidden from the limited human sight. And now, when a world full of strange threats loomed over the edge of his gaze, he was beginning to feel bad for never having done so.
As his breathing recovered and his thoughts flowed through his head, Subaru finally noticed something very unusual about his body that had nothing to do with his rejuvenated appearance. A strange weight accompanied his skirt, a weight that was compressed and made his walking a little more difficult. At first he did not pay much attention to it because it was intermingled with all the unnatural sensations that had manifested in him, but he could no longer ignore it. Confused, puzzled and a little expectant, Subaru felt around his own dress a bit until...
...What the actual hell?!
A very sharp knife, so pristine it drained the light with overwhelming gluttony and vomited it out in the form of a thrown weapon, had joined Subaru's hand. Calling it a knife was overly optimistic, though: despite its lightness, it was very thick and unusually long, almost as if it were a sword that had shrunk alongside him. Its tip had such a menacingly professional aura that it seemed illusory - it almost looked like it had some colorless poison resting there since the light seemed to warp once it hit that part of the weapon, as if the world itself recognized that it thing shouldn't exist at all.
Subaru stared at the weapon with more incomprehension than fear. That degree of absurdity was so great that it wasn't even funny anymore. He just tucked it back into his dress with a stunned expression spread all over his face as his mind desperately tried to explain what he had just witnessed.
He was so distracted that he didn't realize that he was no longer alone in the alley.
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Get MORE!
Shop Memberships
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
