It feels so good to know that all I have done so far has not been in vain, that my arduous efforts in enduring the shame and overcoming the shyness with which I lived most of my past life have not been completely ignored, as these, unbeknownst to me, gradually made a favorable impression on the women of the place, one which today has, at last, made itself noticed.
Their preference for me became evident when the thing that bothered me so much, which was to leave this cave being led away tied up as if I were a prisoner on my way to the slave market, was resolved without even doing anything about it.
Although, before today’s arrival, I thought long and hard about what I would have to do to save myself from that situation.
Asking them directly would be foolish since, in addition to the fact that I am not familiar with the language in which they communicate, to do so would be to leave evidence of the difference that exists between me and the other brats.
For the same reason, I also ruled out the possibility of communicating with them through sign language. After all, these midgets only know how to grunt as if they were beasts, which, curiously enough, they use to talk to each other.
Unfortunately, such language software didn’t come installed in this body’s brain, so when they did, all my eyes saw was some guys acting like crazy.
‘It does not seem right to me to think this way after taking something that was not mine. However, I cannot deny something so clear, and it is that Tinny’s body is so inefficient as far as intelligence is concerned since, in addition to the impossibility of being able to communicate with my counterparts, two of my three special powers, from when I was a disembodied entity, disappeared’
As if that were not enough, the only thing I have left has become more of a nuisance than a help, for although over time I have learned to put up with this speed of thought, I had to work very hard to achieve it.
Think, think, and keep thinking. That’s my day-to-day, something I do even now, as I follow the backs of the two nannies who have given me enough confidence to lead me loose with them, unlike the boy next to me, a brat who walks around with his hands tied and a rag covering his mouth.
Four people, two of us wearing footwear and two not, walk down the long corridor as I find myself thinking and reminiscing about the events that have brought me this far.
Of course, it’s not that that’s always all I do. After all, now that I can see, smell, hear, and feel, I have a wide variety of options at my disposal.
Sometimes, when I was lying in the crib, I would look up at the ceiling, and as if my soul was coming out of my body, I could imagine seeing everything around me in the third person.
While the brats were fighting, even without having them in front of me, I watched them, and when they were silent, I thought about other things, like how that place had been formed over decades or centuries.
In my mind, I transformed myself into a drop of water seeping from the surface, which with the passing of the years, little by little, was perforating the soil and the rock until creating a vast space underneath these, for then, one day, someone with his great powers or tools, would arrive here to take possession of this construction made by the hands of mother nature.
Well, I don’t really know if that’s what happened or not, but it doesn’t matter. In any case, my only goal was to kill time.
Besides, thinking, remembering, and imagining is not the only thing I did to adapt to this new life, for sitting on the edge of the crib watching the brats fight was also a method I used for that, as doing so helped my brain to become accustomed to the slow movement of the people and thus avoid the occasional sudden headache.
No doubt all that was too much work to deal half-heartedly with a single problem, which is why I would have preferred still to have my spiritual sense or super memory.
The first one, as much as it pains me, I understand that it was lost because, in the end, since I no longer have a gaseous body, it would be strange to still have it with me. However, the fact that my memory is not so good is the worst.
In the beginning, I thought I still had it, as I have not forgotten even a fragment of my past life, except for those memories that had already disappeared from before, but, as time went by, when I tried to learn the native language, I noticed its absence.
It is not that my memory has become deficient. No, it’s just normal now. So, I find it impossible to remember every word I hear or every action I see. Yes, I remember enough in general, but not so much as to be able to perform the superhuman feat I had set out to do.
‘… one, two, three… one hundred… this road is much longer than I had estimated’
Even if a hundred of my steps are equivalent to fifty of those of an adult, the fact that I feel that we have not made any progress is not normal. After all, correlating all the steps I have taken since the beginning of the journey and the time I have perceived, I would say that we have already walked for about five minutes, with still no sign of the exit.
Doors to the right and doors to the left. Rooms are created and placed without any sense because while some are close to each other, which is the proper way to take advantage of the space of the cave, others are as far apart as minutes away.
‘To top it off, several of them are empty, without an-… oh!’
”Pat! Pat! Pat!… Hum!”
”…”
”… ah!”
‘She just trembled, no?’
Fool, silly, dumb. You must have thought about what you would do before you did it, not after.
Although you had not seen her for several days, you should not have gone to her so hastily. Not, even if habit induced you to do so without thinking about how you would look in her eyes.
‘… and speaking of idiots’
After lamenting for a while about my mistake, I remembered what was behind my back, so I cautiously turned around to see the disaster I had caused by my actions.
‘I guess I need to stop behaving like a naive child, as blaming my actions on the youthful hormones of this body will not always be of any comfort to me’
My running towards the girl, whom I have been trying to get close to for the last few months, caused the beast bound to try to escape from the ropes held by our two guides in order to imitate me.
Besides, such an act itself was a mistake, as, in the end, the girl became afraid of me. I did not think about how scary my smile would look in the middle of this dark corridor, only illuminated by the light of the three women.
”F***”
I couldn’t help complaining in a whisper because just by imagining it that way, it is more than clear why she trembled when she saw me and then quickly went into the room where she was headed from the beginning, slamming the door of this one as she entered.
‘Idiot, at least thirty percent of the closeness I had achieved with her may have been lost after this event’
And to think that I still have to endure the wrath of women struggling to calm the foolish brat.
Until now, I had always believed that this only existed in fantasies, but I was wrong because, right now, I can feel their hostility from a distance…
. . . . .
After a few minutes of battling with the brat, they finally managed to calm him down, and that’s when we continued our journey.
In the end, they didn’t take me tied up like the other one, maybe they didn’t bring enough rope, or they may have thought they couldn’t subdue two monsters with just them.
Be that as it may, it was good for me.
Even so, although they didn’t tie me up, their trust in me disappeared as, after what I did, only one of them walked in front of me while the other stayed at the back of the group to watch that I didn’t make any suspicious moves again.
That was unnecessary since I had learned from my mistake, but it was also understandable.
Fortunately, such a tense atmosphere did not last long, for, after a couple of minutes of walking, we arrived at our destination.
‘As far as I can see, the light at the end of the tunnel is just a myth’
I thought in a silly thought while, thanks to my high-quality eyes, in the distance, I could glimpse the exit and the scenery that awaited me.
‘A forest in the middle of the night, nothing unusual considering what is hidden inside this place’
After all, in novels, monsters’ nests or bandits’ lairs are usually located in lush forests or high mountains.
However, even though I had roughly imagined the appearance of the exterior of this place, the reality is incomparable to anything I may have thought.
When I came out of the cave, I advanced a few steps before I stopped, stunned by the grandeur of nature in this world and, perhaps accustomed to this happening, the girls who brought me here did not force me to continue walking.
Initially, I looked at the trees in the forest in front of me, which seemed as tall as buildings eight or more stories high and as wide as the apartment I lived in when I attended college.
Enormous and intimidating, there’s no doubt about that, but as imposing as they were, they were not as attractive as the thing that really caught my attention.
The sky, the night sky.
”… What?”
I unconsciously blurted out a word I used in my past life. I did it because what I saw surprised me.
The sky above my head was identical to the one in my homeland.
The constellations here were the same ones I saw when I came home from school after talking all day with fatty Oliver, those stars which, with my vision that at that time did not require glasses, seemed so beautiful that I naively tried to count them.
In addition, there is also the moon I am so familiar with, only much, much larger than I am used to seeing. It was perched gracefully in the center of the sky, indicating that the time was midnight.
‘This… no, it can’t be. So, is it a parall-…’
”Augh!”
”Augh!”
While I appreciated the round figure of the moon, a sudden flash blinded me, and not only me as, by the nearby moan I heard, the guy next to me also got the same thing.
It wasn’t until I rubbed my eyes enough to relieve the pain that I understood what had happened.
The scenery around me was more colorful and livelier. The girls who had brought us here had disappeared, probably returning to the cave from where we came out. The brat had also gone who knows where. From the tall trees, I began to hear movement, the life that had been sleeping in them was waking up. My skin was burning a little. For the sake of my eyes, I could no longer see into the sky.
The sun had risen.
