Realization
"...Ugh, it hurts."
I clutched my aching head and hauled myself up, wobbling and swaying. Only once I was on my feet did my head finally start to feel a little clearer.
The moment it did, I looked around. I was in a surprisingly spacious room—even a rough glance suggested it was over three thousand square feet. The space seemed to be divided into sections, with doorways and branching corridors scattered throughout.
"...Uh-huh. The door's locked."
Wondering if I might slip outside somehow, I pushed against the entrance I'd come through, but it only rattled and clattered without giving. Firmly shut, apparently.
"...What on earth happened to me?"
I clearly remembered being at home, applying ointment to a wound, putting on a bandage, and drifting off to sleep...
"...Well, this is definitely not a normal situation."
I couldn't understand why anyone would bother locking me up like this. From the way they'd treated me earlier, if anything, they seemed to think of me as less than an animal.
"...Hm?"
As I mulled this over, pacing in circles, something glinting caught my eye.
A large full-length mirror, reflecting the sunlight streaming in through the window above it. And reflected in that mirror was...
"...Eh? That's... me?"
Anyone could see it was a tiny little kid.
"...The face is mine, all right."
I approached the mirror slowly. Standing in its reflection was me, just with slightly more youthful features.
"...But what's up with my eyes and hair?"
The only difference was that my eyes and hair, which had definitely been black, had turned white—as if bleached.
It was unmistakably my face, yet with eyes and hair that color, the whole thing felt uncanny.
Thump.
"...What on earth is happening to me?"
I sank to the floor right there and began thinking furiously about what could be going on. An inexplicable situation. A changed appearance. And a head that felt strangely foggy... Something enormous had clearly happened to me, but I had no idea why it had happened.
"...First things first—I have to get out of here."
Only by escaping this place would I be able to gather any information at all.
I sprang to my feet and swiftly scanned my surroundings, wondering if there might be a hole or some kind of exit anywhere.
I combed through every inch of my prison—touching every floor with my bare hands, scrutinizing every room with my eyes.
"...No good. It's a complete sealed room."
Not even a mouse hole—there wasn't so much as an ant-sized gap to be found.
I flopped down flat onto the floor. I didn't know where this place was, or why I'd been locked up here, or what had changed about my body. There wasn't a single thing I could figure out.
...Am I just supposed to stay trapped here forever?
The thought sent a jolt of fear through me. As spacious as this place was, a life of confinement was something I flatly refused.
"...Well, they'd at least feed me, right?"
Surely they weren't planning to lock me up here and starve me to death. I spun my hope-threading logic around and around like that.
Shiver shiver.
...Brrr, it's cold....
Maybe because I'd been pacing and stomping around, or maybe because I was lying on the frigid floor—it felt like my strength was draining away faster and faster.
"...Isn't there a blanket or something around...? If not a blanket, then... or at least a pillow..."
I needed something to wrap myself in. Or if not that, something soft to hold onto to chase away this fear. Something that would fit snugly into my arms.
Shivering hard against the chill, I forced myself up off the floor.
"...W-well, at least there's a blanket and a pillow. Thank goodness."
Apparently they weren't trying to freeze me to death after all—I found a plush blanket and pillow tucked in one corner of the room. They were a bit worn, sure, but without them I honestly felt like I would have frozen solid.
"...Mmm. Warm."
Wrapping myself up tight in the blanket and hugging the pillow close, I felt like the heat leaking out of my body slowed, if only a little.
...Yaaawn... sleepy...'
Perhaps the soft, warm, downy blanket melted all the tension right out of me, because a wave of drowsiness crashed over me all at once.
"...Hehe. So soft..."
I nuzzled my cheek against the white pillow. Maybe because my arms weren't lonely for once, a strange sense of security settled over me.
...If I fell asleep like this, would I be able to sleep well?
"...Wah!"
I'd completely lost track of myself, and apparently drifted off at some point.
"...It's night."
I must have slept quite a while, because the moon and the stars were now dancing across the sky outside. It was the first time I'd ever seen the moon and stars shining so brightly, and before I knew it, my gaze was snatched away by the starry sky.
"...So pretty."
Hee hee.
A silly little laugh escaped me without my meaning it to.
Hugging the plush pillow as I gazed up at the night sky, I felt something warm and fluttery blooming in my chest.
"Coo-eeh!"
When I wriggled and rubbed my body around, the soft downy blanket tickled me all over.
"Hehe..."
Lying there, giving myself over to the feeling and passing the time... honestly, a life like this didn't seem all that bad.
Grrrrumble.
But peaceful as it might be, nobody could live without eating.
"...Maybe there's something to eat around here?"
Rolling out of the blanket, I searched the area, thinking a few scraps of food might be stashed away in some corner or other.
"...Hm? Bread and soup?"
And there, right in front of the door that had been firmly shut when I first arrived, sat a plate with a round piece of bread and a bowl of cream soup—cold now, having clearly been left there quite a while ago.
Thump thump.
The wooden floor creaked in time with my footsteps.
"...It's okay to eat this, right?"
It didn't seem like anything had been slipped into it, no poison or anything like that.
...Perfectly ordinary.
The soup and bread tasted utterly plain.
I was scarfing down the food to fill my aching stomach when I noticed it—a little hatch at the bottom of the door that I hadn't seen before.
"...So this is where they push the food in? But wait... I think I could fit through there too."
It was about the size of a food hatch—a meal slot—no bigger. But my body had shrunk compared to before, so with a little luck, I figured I might just squeeze through.
"...Hmm."
Carefully, I wedged myself into the hatch.
Creeeak.
Worming my way through inch by inch, my body actually slid inside.
"...It worked?"
And then I was outside.
Step, step.
I crept slowly down the staircase just ahead.
...This looks exactly like a house out of some medieval drama, huh?
The red carpet spread across the floors, the wallpaper—everything looked expensive, luxurious.
...No matter how I look at it, this is not Korea.
The person who'd grabbed my collar earlier, the whole atmosphere of this place—there was too much about it that didn't add up to Korea.
"Munch munch..."
I popped the bread I'd brought along into my mouth as I looked around.
...But something's off here, isn't it?
Was I always this laid-back? And why did my head feel like it wasn't quite working right?
It wasn't heavy, exactly, but it wasn't light either. Like there was some hazy fog rolled over everything...
...Is this connected to my changed body too?
It seemed like there was some kind of link between the fog in my head and this new body of mine.
...It's not like I've been isekai'd into another world or anything. Right?
In web novels, situations exactly like this were always popping up—but the world wasn't a story, and there was no way something like that could actually happen.
I kept walking through the mansion, lost in thoughts like that.
Bite by bite, the bread that had once been as big as my face dwindled until only half remained.
That was when voices drifted out from a room with its door left slightly ajar.
Before I knew it, I'd drifted toward it and poked my head out from behind the doorframe. Inside, the red-eyed woman I'd seen that morning and an older woman—middle-aged, but with a similar face—were deep in conversation.
"So, Mother. How much longer do you intend to keep that defective product around?"
The red-eyed woman looked far from pleased. And—defective product...? Surely she didn't mean me?
"...That is not your concern."
At her words, the middle-aged woman, seated with her chin resting on her hand, spoke coldly and made a gesture dismissing her. But the woman didn't back down, as if the rebuke had only frustrated her more.
"Why not simply sell it off to a slave merchant and be done with it?"
...A slave merchant? What was that supposed to mean?
"...Shabel."
At that word, the voice of the woman being called Mother grew low and heavy. Even so, Shabel seemed determined to have her say, and stood her ground all the more proudly.
"Why? Did I say something wrong? You bought that defective product's father from a slave merchant yourself, didn't you?"
"...Shabel!"
"If you didn't want the responsibility, you should have erased the problem. What is the meaning of this?!"
...What... is this.
My mind couldn't process it. So that woman was my mother...? But my mom was dead...?
"Shabel. Do not drag the past into this."
Unable to bear any more, the mother let fall a single, decisive word.
"...Wh-what..."
My brain simply stopped at words that defied everything I knew to be true.
CRASH!
"Who's there?!"
At the same moment, my legs gave out beneath me and I collapsed. The half-closed door burst open with a slam.
"...You."
And then the woman's cold eyes fixed on me where I lay sprawled on the floor.
"...Eh... hehe... I-I wasn't trying to eavesdrop, really..."
The words wouldn't come out right. I couldn't think of a single thing to say that might get me through this.
"...Hehe... p-please, spare me... I-I didn't hear anything... I didn't hear a thing, so... please spare me... I-I'll just stay stuck here quiet as a dead mouse, I promise..."
Tears welled up in my eyes.
"......"
Beyond her, I could see the woman presumed to be my biological mother, staring down at me without a flicker of expression.
"...Hah, hah... I'll live quiet as a dead mouse... please, just don't sell me..."
By now, I had no choice but to accept it. This place was not the modern Korea I'd lived in. It was some other world entirely.
A world where human rights barely existed at all.