A Virgin's Nightmare
I felt a warm, cozy sunlight.
It was like a hill covered in beautiful yellow and purple flowers, giving me the illusion of being in heaven.
Bathed in that refreshing, heartwarming glow, I slowly opened my eyes.
And in that moment...
Everything I had felt—the warmth, the sunlight that had filtered through my closed eyelids...
It all vanished the second my eyes opened.
No warmth, no light, no hill of flowers. Nothing remained.
The only thing visible was an incomprehensible space, swallowed by an endless, suffocating darkness.
The moment I saw it, I realized I was dreaming.
It was one of those dreams where knowing you're asleep doesn't help you wake up. It was like a game you couldn't exit without clearing a specific condition.
...I had had this dream countless times before. So, without panicking, I let my eyes adjust to the dark to get my bearings.
What appeared before me was a narrow door, barely wide enough for my body to squeeze through. It was the exit to this dream, and the most suspicious yet familiar door I had ever seen.
Having no other choice, I reluctantly stepped through it.
...
..
Inside the door was the interior of a house. It wasn't spacious, but it was big enough for a family of four to live comfortably.
This, too, was a place from my memories.
Without a word, I headed toward the usual spot.
I didn't want to go, but if I didn't, I would never wake up. In fact, even if I stood still, the dream would drag me there by force.
If I refused to enter the door, it would use the terror of death to force me inside.
Like shrinking the walls to threaten to crush me to death... or suffocating me.
Even though it was my own dream, it was incredibly malicious. It did everything in its power to force me to witness what I wanted to see least.
But at the same time, I used to feel a tiny sliver of joy.
Because I could walk.
Because in this dream, I could walk somewhere on my own, just like I used to.
Since it was only possible because it was a dream, I used to dread this nightmare while simultaneously wishing to keep having it, just to use my two legs again.
At least, until I saw how the dream ended...
But now, I could walk in reality.
There was no reason to have this dream anymore, nor did I want to. I never expected to experience it again.
I thought I had long since discarded my lingering regrets and fears along with my old body.
So why, of all times, was I having this dream again now...?
Lost in thought, I began to wander through the house.
It was a familiar layout. Right next to the front door—which never opened, no matter what—was a single room.
Past the living room were two more rooms and a cramped kitchen.
...This was the house where my family lived before my sister and I ran away.
It was bound to be familiar. Like it or not, it was the house I had lived in for twenty years.
...It was here.
I had seen this dream so many times. I knew the way out.
I had to open the door to the master bedroom... and helplessly relive what happened inside.
That was the only way to escape this dream.
I opened the master bedroom door.
The door I never wanted to open, which felt as if it were secured by dozens of locks.
"You're here?"
...Right. This dream was always like this.
The worst kind of nightmare, showing me only the things I never wanted to see.
...Seriously.
I wanted to get out of here this very second.
Because the man speaking to me was the one who had lived as he pleased and died as he pleased.
My father.
...And he was the person I absolutely had to face if I wanted to wake up.
The method of waking up was simple.
The moment my father, who was now approaching me with a gleeful look, beat me to the point where I would never be able to use my legs again—that was when I always woke up.
Today would probably be no different.
Only...
It always bothered me that I couldn't move whenever this happened.
Was it out of fear? Or because of the terror engraved into my soul?
No, this was simply a reenactment of what had already occurred.
Since it was impossible to change the contents of the dream, I had no choice but to accept it.
...The figure approaching me, holding something sharp stained in red, was no longer a father. He was a demon.
A cruel, deeply human demon who deceived people and ultimately destroyed them.
"It's your fault."
What exactly was?
I wanted to ask him what exactly was my fault, to challenge the words he spat out like a habit.
But I didn't have the courage. I lacked the strength to talk back. Even now, when I thought I had changed, I still didn't possess that kind of courage.
In my father's hand was an object wrapped in a dark haze.
It was a condensation of every weapon and blunt instrument he had ever used to beat me day after day.
...
It slowly walked toward me.
My father's eyes were out of focus. At this point, he had already crossed the line once, so crossing it again was all too easy for him.
"It's your fault. It's your fault. It's your fault. It's your fault."
...Perhaps because it was a dream, he only repeated the same phrase. Yet, it was terrifying. In fact, the repetition made it even more horrifying.
My body, frozen as if it had reverted to its former state...
Or perhaps because it really had reverted, escaping from this situation was impossible.
The moment I truly lost my composure was when I realized I had lost the only thing I had left—my current female body.
The black mass raised high above his head was a massive weapon aimed at me. And the moment it swung down once more toward my pristine, unblemished white legs...
Without even being able to scream in agony...
I managed to wake up.
"Fuck..."
I panted heavily, gasping for air over and over again.
Cold sweat drenched my body and soaked the bedsheets. The terror of the dream still clung to me, refusing to fade.
...I had had the exact same nightmare again.
A nightmare where I became the past self I loathed so much.
A nightmare that dragged up the memories I desperately wanted to forget.
I immediately rushed toward the mirror.
No, "crawled" might be a more accurate description.
Completely forgetting that I now had a body that could walk, driven by the sheer terror and dread of the dream...
Because I had seen that body in my dream—the very embodiment of the past I hated and wanted to erase...
I crawled toward the mirror as if fleeing for my life, terrified and on the verge of tears.
Thud.
The sound of something falling and breaking echoed.
As I scrambled frantically across the floor of this cramped, cluttered apartment, driven by a desperate instinct to survive, books, glasses, and various other items clattered to the ground around me.
But I was too consumed by panic to even register the noise.
...Only after I calmed down a bit did I realize I could stand up on my own, and I pushed myself off the floor.
My face was reflected in the cracked mirror.
The face from that hideous dream continued to torment me, but I forced my newly functioning feet to stand straight and looked at my reflection.
Ah, of course.
The reflection was the "present" me. It was my current self, beautiful enough to be loved by anyone. My anxiety had been nothing but a foolish illusion.
Standing before the mirror was the ideal I had imagined and drawn in my mind hundreds of times—a girl with pure white hair and crimson eyes, possessing a rare, breathtaking beauty.
The very image of the ideal self I had yearned for so desperately.
A form created solely out of the desire to escape hatred now smiled back at me from the glass, almost mockingly.
It really was different from the dream.
It was completely different from the ugly, twisted self I had seen in my nightmare—the self even I had given up on.
Now, I could be loved by anyone, unconditionally.
Not that I wanted it, but if I chose to, I could easily win everyone's affection.
No one disliked beautiful things. No one would hate me now that I looked like this.
So, the current me was different from the past.
I could walk, I could run. With this body, I would never be beaten without reason, cursed at without reason, or hated without reason. The past could never repeat itself.
"Haa... Haa..."
I took a few deep breaths.
I repeated the cycle of inhaling and exhaling for minutes, perhaps tens of minutes, trying to soothe my racing heart.
Eventually, the panic attack subsided, and my mind began to settle.
Slowly... very slowly, I regained my composure.
"...I guess I still have nightmares."
Though I had never shown it, I suppose I had grown arrogant.
...I thought I had changed. Ever since the day I became a girl, I believed that with this beautiful appearance, I could laugh off the past as just a memory or a joke to tell over drinks.
I assumed that because my body had changed, my mind had healed as well. That arrogance was completely shattered by the nightmare.
It was proof that even with such a beautiful face, my twisted, broken interior remained unchanged.
Should I be glad I realized it now?
...I collapsed back onto the bed, my body feeling heavy now that the tension had left. For some reason, the bed smelled exceptionally nice today.
I turned on my outdated smartphone. The brightness was set to maximum, and the blinding light stabbed at my eyes the moment the screen lit up.
"Ah, shit."
I really need to get a new phone soon.
Once I start making good money from streaming, the phone is the first thing I'm replacing...
I adjusted the brightness of the broken phone, which couldn't even hold its settings properly, to match the dark room. The clock read 4:00 AM.
I was still half-asleep.
"What the hell was I doing in the middle of the night..."
Now that my head was clear, I started worrying about the disturbance I must have caused my sleeping neighbors.
The loud clattering of things breaking and the heavy thuds of objects falling...
...If they came knocking tomorrow, I would definitely have to perform a full sliding bow to apologize.
"Sigh."
I lamented my pathetic state. I thought I had discarded all my past regrets when I got this body, but that was a load of crap.
I guess childhood scars really can't be easily erased, let alone completely healed.
Even though my body had completely changed.
And even though I didn't have a single family member left by my side.
But since my inner self was still the same, I suppose this was only natural.
Back when I used to constantly wish for death, even the word "family" filled me with dread.
"...It's ridiculous."
Just because my body changed didn't mean the things I went through had vanished. What kind of confidence made me think otherwise?
Hyperventilating and crawling away in terror just because I saw my father in a dream...
This wasn't overcoming it; it was just running away.
Feeling a wave of misery wash over me, I rolled over to the edge of the bed.
...Lately, I had been thinking about myself a lot more.
Not just about minor things like becoming a girl or starting to stream,
But questioning the process of how I became a girl in the first place, rather than just accepting the result.
I couldn't tell if this was a good thing or a bad thing. Philosophers and the like always said that the more you understand yourself, the better your quality of life becomes, but my situation felt a bit different from that.
Why did I only become a girl now?
It was a meaningless question to ask myself at this point.
A question I had asked myself countless times on the day I transformed.
There was no answer. Naturally, because I didn't know it.
Above all, the person who knew the answer wasn't me, but the one who made me this way.
For example, God?
That God in heaven, the one they call our Father.
Not that I had a shred of faith left in me...
I had realized long ago, through countless prayers, that clinging to God and praying for miracles only worked in the Bible.
Despite hundreds of prayers begging Him to save a lost lamb like me, what happened to me wasn't a miracle.
It was a curse called misfortune that relentlessly tormented me.
With things like that blocking my path, I could no longer believe in God.
So, I wondered, why now of all times?
If turning me into a girl was a miracle granted by that Father in the dark, terrifying heavens, why did it happen now?
Why not back when I still had a sliver of hope, when there were still paths open to me? Why did it have to be now, when I had lost all hope and abandoned my faith entirely?
"..."
Even so, I had no intention of rejecting this miracle.
If anything, I welcomed it more gladly than anyone else could.
...If...
If this was the final mercy and blessing bestowed upon an apostate who had abandoned God...
Then I pray...
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit...
...Yeah, praying really doesn't suit me.