Chapter 2
Chapter 2
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 2
Chapter Title: Lost in Nighthaven (1)
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It was a senseless accident.
A cargo truck suddenly swerved onto the sidewalk.
It was just my luck to be standing in its path.
At the time, I was focused on my smartphone screen.
I was at a really exciting part of a popular manga, *Fixer*.
A ten-ton hunk of steel, hurtling toward me at a merciless speed.
By the time I noticed it, it was already too late.
The truck driver's head was slumped forward.
The cause of the accident was probably drowsy driving.
For someone like me, who overthinks things and never even jaywalks, it was a bolt from the blue.
The silver lining, if you could call it that, was that after I died a clean death without feeling any pain,
I woke up in a strange, new body.
As someone with a keen interest in subcultures like manga and anime,
I could tell this was what they commonly call reincarnation or transmigration.
But life is full of twists and turns.
Things never go the way you want them to.
I was immediately faced with two very troublesome problems.
First, I couldn't speak, as if I had a severe injury to my throat.
And second... I was now clearly in the body of a young girl.
Reincarnated, yes, but as a mute, gender-swapped girl!
Like the Little Mermaid who lost her voice in exchange for legs,
perhaps I had offered up my voice and gender as payment for coming back from the dead.
‘Hmm… When you put it like that, it almost seems like a reasonable trade. I mean, my voice and gender in exchange for being brought back to life.’
My brain’s positivity circuit went into overdrive.
Being alive, no matter as what, is better than being dead and gone.
And to be reincarnated as a human with all my limbs intact, not as some beast, insect, or plant.
How grateful I should be.
Especially since I can't stand bugs.
If I'd been reborn as a caterpillar or a centipede... I would have crawled into the water without hesitation, hoping for a reroll.
‘So, where am I?’
After concluding that being reincarnated as a mute girl was more of a gain than a loss,
I crossed my soft arms and looked around.
The place I woke up in was a stark, white room.
The only things in it were a bed, a door, and a light.
The windowless white walls and floor were reminiscent of a hospital room.
Even the clothes I was wearing were plain white garments.
Perhaps it wasn't too far from the truth.
‘Doesn't seem like I can get much information here. Is there anything to do... other than get out?’
I naturally headed for the door, the only exit in the room.
After checking my surroundings for any surveillance cameras,
I carefully pressed my ear against the door.
Opening it carelessly could lead to irreversible consequences.
I had to gather even the slightest bit of information.
‘I can't hear anything.’
But there was no sound from beyond the door.
It was as if there was nothing outside.
Still, just in case, I kept my ear to the door and waited for a long time.
And only after being certain that nothing would change no matter how long I waited,
did I cautiously place my hand on the doorknob.
To make sure no sound escaped as I opened it,
I planned to open the door very slowly and gently.
‘Huh. It won't budge.’
Contrary to my expectations, the doorknob didn't move.
Unless it was just for decoration, the door was definitely locked.
This was an emergency.
To think the door I thought was the only way out was locked.
I started to grip the doorknob tighter and tighter.
But even when I put my entire weight into it, the knob showed no sign of moving.
‘How am I supposed to get out of here now?’
The moment I fully grasped the situation,
a news story I once saw flashed through my mind.
[ Man in his 20s dies in bathroom after bicycle falls in front of door... ]
This was not good.
Without help from the outside, I was fated to starve to death here.
My eyes naturally darted around, searching for anything that could help.
Of course, in a space where the only furniture was a bed, there was no chance of finding a useful item lying around.
Aside from realizing the ceiling was quite high, I didn't find much.
‘If I could dismantle the bed frame and make a tool... Yeah, not with these flimsy arms.’
No matter how I thought about it, the chances of escaping on my own were zero.
Besides, my current arms were those of a child—pale, soft, and without a hint of muscle.
It didn't seem like I could break down the securely locked door.
‘I'm completely trapped in this desolate room.’
But strangely, even though I fully understood that,
I didn't feel scared or desperate about the situation.
Instead, a strange, unidentifiable confidence filled my chest.
As if I could easily clear a gap of this size.
It was a feeling much like that of an athlete.
So, I followed my instincts and raised a hand, aiming at the doorknob.
And when I felt a connection form between my palm and the doorknob,
I twisted it with all my might using an invisible hand.
Screeech...!
The doorknob became grotesquely misshapen, as if crushed in a press.
At this rate, the doorknob would just break without the door ever opening.
I instinctively raised my other hand, cupping it around the knob as I thought,
‘Might as well just destroy it completely.’
The invisible hand obeying my will went beyond simply denting the doorknob.
It began to wreck the internal mechanism of the door.
And by the time it was a far cry from its original, pristine state,
the door that seemed impossible to open by force began to creak and tilt.
I had escaped the empty, white room.
*
I peeked my head through the gap in the hideously mangled door.
Beyond the door was a hallway.
An obsessively white hallway, reminiscent of an experimental ward.
With not a single person in the long, wide, windowless corridor,
it exuded a creepy atmosphere straight out of a ghost story.
‘No people. No cameras or other devices, either...’
But perhaps because my emotions had felt strangely dull since I reincarnated,
I didn't feel particularly afraid, despite being in an unfamiliar place.
Maybe it was because this whole situation didn't feel real.
Still, getting involved with people would be a hassle.
I stepped out into the hallway as quietly as possible.
Of course, even if something troublesome were to happen,
I'd be fine thanks to the power I used to open the door—let's call it psychokinesis for now.
I walked down the hallway, focusing my senses.
Whoever locked a perfectly fine person in a room they couldn't get out of couldn't possibly be sane.
I needed to detect any presence before they detected me.
But my efforts were in vain; no matter how far I walked, I couldn't find a single person, let alone an exit.
I'd turned countless corners and gone up and down who knows how many stairs.
It was enough to make me wonder if I was in a building at all, and not some kind of maze designed to make people lose their way.
Walking around any further won't help me find an exit.
Giving up on finding the path, I decided to change my approach.
‘There are no windows here, no matter where I look. And there are stairs that go up unusually high. In that case... it's probably underground.’
It was just a hypothesis for now, but,
if this place really was underground?
Considering its vastness, with no end in sight even after walking for so long,
there had to be a ventilation shaft connected to the outside somewhere.
And it wasn't long before,
I found a vent near the ceiling, covered by a metal grille.
‘That's it. Hmm... it's a bit of a ways up, though.’
The height was about three meters.
Without a ladder,
it was a distance this small girl's body could never reach.
But that wasn't a problem.
Because now, I had psychokinesis.
A power strong enough to forcibly tear open a locked door made of solid steel.
Naturally, a simple metal grille held in by screws was a piece of cake.
Using the detached grille as a foothold, I climbed up.
Then I carefully controlled my psychokinesis to slip my body into the ventilation shaft.
And inside the narrow, dark shaft, a stark contrast to the wide hallway, I could feel a faint breeze brush against my cheek.
‘Bingo.’
A breeze meant a connection to the outside.
I crawled through the shaft, going up, ever upward.
Perhaps because vents aren't designed for people to pass through,
the shaft twisted and turned erratically.
But my psychokinesis was a great help in navigating such an impossible path.
By focusing the power on the soles of my feet like footholds, I was able to keep climbing.
Just as I thought I must have climbed dozens of meters up the shaft,
I finally reached the exit.
Outside the vent was a dark forest at night.
A cold sensation rose from the grass under my bare feet.
To think that such a vast and deep place would lead out into a forest.
It seemed the place I'd woken up in was hidden away from prying eyes.
‘Is this some kind of secret base? What on earth were they thinking... Huh?’
I had this casual thought as I looked around,
when my eyes suddenly landed on something that made me freeze.
A skyscraper of unrealistic height, its powerful presence visible even from a great distance.
Near the top was a very familiar symbol.
The setting of the popular manga *Fixer*, which I was reading right before I was hit by that truck, where the main character had his adventures.
Nighthaven, a city where metahumans and humans live together on an Earth that has merged with another world.
It was, without a doubt, the dragon emblem that symbolized Nighthaven.
‘Don't tell me I've been reincarnated into the world of a manga.’
Transmigrated into the manga I was reading just before I died.
Should I be happy about this? Or sad?
With a blank expression, I stood there motionless for a long time,
staring vacantly at the skyscraper.