Adaptation (1)
Even as the world crumbled toward its end, morning still arrived.
I remembered thrashing about in bed, twisted up in anguish over my identity and the unfamiliar new sensations flooding this body. Yet somehow I had drooled all over myself, lulled into sleep by the long-forgotten softness of modern civilization.
See? Even now, drool was trailing from the corner of my mouth.
"Ugh... is it morning already? *slurp*... Feels like I woke up early considering how late I went to bed."
I wiped the drool from my lips, slipped out of bed, rubbed my eyes, and headed for the bathroom to wash my face.
"Haaah. Nothing wakes you up like cold water, after all~"
Just in case, I checked the mirror. Sure enough, the lovely girl who looked so much like Partruna was still staring back at me.
"Ha! Well, I already knew the voice was the same, but I had to look anyway. So this is really how it is..."
I suppose I'll have to get used to it now, I thought, pouring a glass of water in the kitchen before stepping out onto the terrace.
The window slid open with a soft rattle. Cool morning air teased through my hair and lifted my spirits.
I rested my chin on the railing and let my gaze drift over the view.
"For a world that's supposedly ending, this is a pretty beautiful sight."
Anyone overhearing me might have snapped that such words were absurd while the world died around us. Still, the landscape before me was genuinely worth looking at.
In the distance rose a tower, half-collapsed buildings clustered around it, green vines and moss wrapping their broken frames, trees stretching up from below. Of course, places like that were rare; most of what I saw was the bleak, desolate ruin of a world already gone to waste.
"I still can't make sense of it. One side looks like pure wasteland, while the other looks like enough time has passed for nature to reclaim everything..."
I finished the last of the water while staring at that ironic scenery, then returned to the room. Enjoying the view was enough for now. From here on, simply adapting to this body and learning the skills I needed to survive the remaining month would be more than enough to keep me busy.
After a simple breakfast I rummaged through the closet for something to wear outside.
Yesterday, after bathing, I had been too far gone to care and just grabbed whatever was in front of me. Now I saw the truth: everything was either women's clothing or something androgynous at best.
And of course the underwear drawer was filled entirely with women's things. Wonderful.
"Hmm. Maybe just a hoodie, a short-sleeved tee, and these dolphin shorts? I'm not going far."
They were comfortable, so I hadn't noticed how revealing the dolphin shorts really were. Of course they were—this short, they might as well have been hot pants.
I spread a thin veil of holy power just to be sure. Thankfully no one else was in the building. If there had been, I would have died of embarrassment on the spot. Truly.
"The date said March, so this should be fine. It felt pretty warm out on the terrace earlier."
Dressed and shod, I opened the door.
It creaked as though it had not been opened in a very long time. Beyond it stretched a long corridor, broken in places so that concrete had crumbled away, revealing the outside world, plants pushing in through the holes.
"Koff—ugh, dust... Has anyone even been here at all?"
I waved the dust away and headed for the stairs. The elevator doors stood open, but the car itself looked as if it had already plummeted to the bottom, so I turned away without a second thought.
The faded lettering on the stairwell wall still managed to tell me I was on the tenth floor.
"Makes sense. That's why the view was so good."
I considered checking the floors above, but collapsed concrete and rubble had already sealed the way.
Step by step I descended. By the fifth floor or so, this slender body was already exhausted.
"Haa... haa... hhk... What... what kind of body gets this tired from just this much, seriously..."
I paused to catch my breath and peeked through an open emergency door into the fifth-floor hallway. It, too, looked long abandoned—the floor blanketed in a thick white quilt of dust.
"Haaah... still, better check. Might as well try a few doors."
The dust-covered corridor was soon marred by the small footprints of a woman. I tried several doors; none would open. Then, just as I was about to give up—
A soft click, and the door at the very end swung free.
"Oh! It opened! All right, let's take a look!"
I stepped inside.
The room was filled with blood that had long since blackened and hardened.
The first bloodstains I had seen since returning to this world, and the thick, cloying stench that came with them.
At the sight, this fragile body simply gave out. My legs buckled and I sank to the floor before I could stop myself.
"Hiiik—w-why am I collapsing over something like this?! It's not like I've never seen this kind of thing before...!"
Whether it was the change in sex or something else, my fingertips kept trembling. My legs had drawn themselves up; my arms were wrapped tightly around them.
A few seconds later warmth bloomed from my lower abdomen. The fear-driven shaking quieted, and my body, which had refused to move, began to answer me again.
"Haaah... I never understood why she gave me the Blessing of Courage. So this is why... What a pathetic body..."
I stood, brushed the dust from my backside, and poured holy power into the rosary. Armor answered the call. A bastard sword was already in my right hand.
"Just in case, better check thoroughly."
Sword in one hand, I shaped a flame of pure holy power—Holy Fire—in the other.
Back in the other world, Maderona, I had possessed so little talent that even this simple Holy Fire had taken me months to form. Knowing the method was one thing; without talent it never came this easily.
"Moving holy power itself isn't a problem, and there's quite a lot of it. I should be able to keep this going for a while."
I cycled the power once through my body. Warm light settled over me like a second skin. At the same moment a faint headache struck, as if information were being driven straight into my skull.
"Partruna's Armor? A growth-type defensive set...? And it can be summoned partially. Convenient."
I tested it at once—cloak or robe alone, metal plates alone, even a single gauntlet. The armor answered every request. Once I had the feel of it, I sent holy power into the sword the same way.
With a soft roar, Holy Fire coiled along the blade.
The bastard sword's name was Durandal, and that was all the information that came. Something had deliberately locked the rest away. Why, I had no idea.
Who could ever understand a god's mind? One who could take a perfectly ordinary man and turn him into a cute, pretty girl?
"Ah—what am I even saying, cute and pretty..."
I shook my head hard. The thought had slipped out unbidden, and a warm flush rose to my cheeks.
After a little more practice circulating holy power and a few light swings of the blade, I stepped fully into the blood-soaked room.
Kitchen and living room held only dust and broken furniture. Deeper in, a door scarred by many small handprints and half-smashed open revealed what lay beyond.
Corpses the size of small children, long since rotted almost to bone.
"Ugh..."
The unexpected sight of children's remains and the smell that rose from them brought bile surging up my throat. The blessing barely held it down. I raised Holy Fire and burned the bodies until only white ash remained.
"Haaah... May you find a better place than this..."
Already exhausted by my first exploration, I never even considered going all the way down to the first floor. I climbed straight back to the tenth-floor apartment I was using.
Unlike the descent, I had reinforced my body with holy power this time, so the climb itself was not too draining. Only the mental weight of tasting this world's cruelty remained.
Back in the room I showered quickly, then sat on the bed and wrapped the trembling body in a blanket.
I had known. In a world already this far gone, I would never see anything kind. Yet facing even a fragment of that wretched reality head-on was different. The blessing had stopped the shaking once, but now it started again.
I buried my face in the covers. When I finally came back to myself, the sky beyond the window had turned to dark night, and the blanket held the faint traces of tears.
Only days ago I could have looked at such a scene and simply moved on. Now that I was a woman, every memory of it brought water to my eyes.
"Haaah... haaah... I can't just stay like this...!"
I scrubbed away the tears that threatened to fall, threw off the blanket, and stood.
I opened the terrace window, looked up at the moon, and quietly dropped to one knee, offering a prayer to Partruna.
This was a vow.
Even in this rotting, crumbling world, with only this one body, I would do everything in my power so that no one else would meet the same end as those children I had seen today.