The stars blanketing the sky above, seen from the bottom of a ravine, are more beautiful than anything she has ever seen. The complete opposite of her current self, who has slipped and tumbled down onto a pile of illegally dumped trash.
(What a terrible way to die… my name really doesn’t suit me at all.)
She laughs bitterly, comparing her name — Misaki Hanazono — to the life she’s lived. Raised in an orphanage, never knowing the faces of her parents, fired from a company that did nothing but harass her, and then she went and clung to some words she heard once — “climb a mountain and your life will change” — and climbed a mountain, only for this to happen. Her life certainly changed, all right. Or rather, it’s about to end.
She has no one in the world. No friends. No one who would go looking for her when she disappears. She must have hurt something important when she fell, because she can’t move, and it hurts terribly. And on top of that, it’s genuinely, truly cold, and her consciousness is growing hazy. She’ll probably just be found someday as a pile of bones.
(God, please… at least in my next life, something prettier… a flower, maybe…)
Though actually, flowers have such short lives, so that would be its own kind of awful. That was her final thought before Misaki’s consciousness cut out.
Awareness surfaces. It’s like that feeling of waking up bright and clear on a morning with no dreams. But my body won’t move properly. My mind is perfectly clear, and yet my whole body feels packed into a mold and fixed in place — that’s the only way to describe it.
I try struggling for a while, but it’s no use, so I give up. I can’t move, but I can breathe, and somehow it’s warm and comfortable here. On top of that, even though I’m not doing anything, I feel something like delicious for some reason, so I must be eating somehow.
(Is this what they call heaven? It’s not what I imagined, but…)
A situation where I can keep living without doing anything. It’s easy enough — no working, nothing I have to do. But it’s awfully boring. I don’t know how much time I spend like that.
It’s just so incredibly dull. If only I could move my arms and legs freely and run around nimbly —
“NYAAAAAAAAAA!?!?!!”
It’s sudden. Something like the feeling of having your hair yanked — I’m dragged out of that comfortable place by something.
Startled, in a mild panic, I let out a huge scream. A shriek so enormous I’m surprised at myself, that I was capable of a voice that loud. And in the middle of it all, I think I hear a phantom sound — a short little melody from some mysterious trumpet going pa-pa-pa-PAA! None of this makes any sense.
I spin lightly through the air and then get dropped onto the ground. My field of vision is filled with bright blue sky, and I understand two things: I’m outside, and I’m lying on the ground.
(That scared me… what on earth?)
Thinking that, I plant both hands on the ground and push myself up — and before I can even be glad that my arms and legs move freely, something green enters my vision and I flinch and look over.
It’s a person. A giant, skin entirely green, three times my size, collapsed on the ground.
“KYAAAAAAAAAA!?!?”
Startled and terrified by the bizarre sight, I scream and run from the spot at full speed. A trumpet melody starts playing again from somewhere, and even that frightens me and makes me cry and scream.
I desperately move my arms and legs and run through an enormous thicket of grass, running and running. Where is this? A strange place where grass grows taller than I am. Could it be that this isn’t heaven but hell?
(Someone, anyone, help me! Can’t anyone hear my voice!?)
More voice, more strength. Until it reaches someone. I run with that wish. I think I hear an electronic ping sound separate from the repeating melody, but I don’t have the presence of mind to pay it any attention. The scenery shifts from grassland to a forest of enormous trees.
I keep screaming and running, and eventually the melody that was repeating in my head starts coming less frequently and disappears entirely. Once the strange sounds stop too, I finally start to calm down, and I wander in a daze toward a spring I happen to spot.
(Let me drink some water and settle down… can I even drink this?)
I peer into the spring, and freeze at what I see reflected there. A brown object, peering in at the surface. Pitch-black eyes, like a clay figure’s. Completely mismatched with a beautiful flower I’ve never seen before growing out of the top of it.
I pull my gaze from the water and look down at my own body. The hands I lift up are the same brown as my torso. Same with my feet. The simplest way to describe it: an oversized radish with what appear to be arms and legs sticking out. Except fatter and shorter than a normal daikon, more of a round little turnip shape than anything.
“N-NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!”
I realize I’ve become something that is not human, and I scream again at the top of my lungs. In the first place, I — no, Misaki — couldn’t scream like this. Had never done it. Even when she was hit, even when she was shoved down stairs, she bit her lip and killed her voice without ever crying out. …So I am no longer Misaki. I’m something else.
I’m crying and screaming from a fear I can’t quite understand, and something falls from above and lands with a thud beside me, startling me into another shriek. Looking carefully, it’s a bird, twitching and convulsing.
(D-did it die… no, did it faint and fall…? Because of my voice?)
A plant that lets out an obnoxious shriek. Anything that hears its screams dies — or faints. There is exactly one creature I can think of that fits that description.
(Could it be… I reincarnated as a Mandrake…!?)
The plants weren’t big. I was small. After all, I’m a Mandrake. However you think about it, it’s not a particularly large plant. Which means the green giant that was collapsed on the ground — may not have been a giant at all.
Somehow, I seem to have been reincarnated into another world as a Mandrake. Since it’s a world where Mandrakes exist, I have no idea what the ecosystem is like. How am I supposed to survive here?
(God, I’ll admit — when I was dying, I did wish I could become a beautiful flower or something. But I never wished for even a second to reincarnate as a Mandrake…!)
And so, in the depths of despair, I cried and screamed once more — just like a proper Mandrake.