It's Urgent
My name is Lee Yuan.
Born an orphan with no one in the world to call family, I grew up in an orphanage. Even after I came of age and stepped out into society, I remained nothing more than a creature thrashing desperately against a cold, unforgiving reality.
I had heard that humans were social animals, yet I never managed to fit in anywhere. I wandered, relying on no one, and slowly fell apart.
Perhaps I had finally reached my limit. I locked myself inside the semi-basement studio apartment I could barely keep with part-time wages, and every night as I drifted off I prayed that morning would never come.
In the middle of that shut-in existence I decided to die, and threw myself into the freezing waters of the Han River.
"Wh-what…?"
When I opened my eyes, the scene spread before me looked like something out of a fantasy film.
I had transmigrated to another world.
At first I was so happy I could have danced—
but that joy was crushed almost at once.
"Who the hell are you? Where did you crawl in from? Hair that black… suspicious."
"Excuse me?"
"I've never seen eyes and hair this black. A spy sent from another country, maybe?"
They began to discriminate against me and look down on me simply because my hair and eyes were black. Strictly speaking my eyes were a deep dark brown, but unless you looked closely they appeared black, so that was how they saw them.
"Please… please… I'll work for free! I'll do anything! Just let me sleep inside!"
"So you're that filthy Crow the rumors talk about! Get out of my sight!"
Even my desperate pleas earned me nothing. People called me by the slur Crow and refused to help me at all.
That was right. In this world, it seemed no one had black hair or black eyes. Looking at the people on the streets, I saw only gold, blue, red, green—every vivid color imaginable for hair and eyes.
From their point of view, a sudden black-haired, black-eyed stranger must have seemed alien.
"Still, damn it… this isn't right."
Cursing changed nothing, yet I refused to give up. For several days I slept on the streets and kept searching for someone—anyone—who would help me.
"Get the hell out of here, you filthy Crow! Don't even come near my shop!"
A restaurant owner shouted at me as I begged.
"I-I'll work for free… please, I'm begging you…"
"Shit! If a bastard like you worked in my place, the customers would take one look at those creepy eyes and that hair and run screaming! Disappear already!"
The door slammed shut. I felt the mocking stares of the people around me.
"Pfft, how can hair be that pitch-black?"
"Not just the hair. The eyes are black too."
"He's definitely a demon's child. Don't even look at him."
My hands clenched into fists of their own accord.
"You… you rotten bastards…"
I turned my back on the contemptuous crowd and simply ran.
"I'm leaving. You filthy pieces of trash."
I ground my teeth and kept running until the buildings and people fell away behind me and I finally reached the forest.
"This time… I don't want to give up."
In my old world I had abandoned life. I did not want to make that same choice in the new life I had been given.
"Fine… I'll just live alone in the forest."
Muttering that to myself, I walked into the trees.
After walking for hours my legs began to tremble and my breath grew short.
All I had in the bundle on my back was a single apple and a piece of bread I had begged for at the market the day before. No matter how far I walked, the same endless trees stretched on in a way that felt almost nightmarish.
"Hah… hah… my legs feel like they're going to break…"
Water first. I had to find water. If I kept going like this, thirst would drop me long before anything else.
"Hnn… huh? W-water…?"
Just then I heard the faint sound of flowing water ahead. I forced every last scrap of strength into my legs and ran toward it.
Wait—
The moment I pushed through the thick undergrowth and stepped forward, something felt wrong. The solid ground I had always felt under my feet was gone.
It was a cliff.
Maybe I had been so desperate for water that I had run too hard. My feet were already hanging in empty air, and in the next instant I was falling.
"A-aaaaaahhh!!"
The terror of death seized me—then,
Splash!
I plunged into the icy blue river.
"Puh… ugh…!"
The water must have been deep enough that I wasn't hurt. I flailed and swam until I reached the bank, then collapsed and shoved my face into the current, gulping water like a madman.
Once the immediate danger of dying had passed, I looked around, body soaked and shivering. I had fallen from a rocky cliff straight into the river.
"If there hadn't been a river at the bottom… ugh, I don't even want to imagine it."
When I turned around, I nearly fell over backward.
Pale skin, long red hair, and sapphire-blue eyes with vertical slit pupils. A height that easily exceeded two meters. A pair of enormous wings that called to mind a bat or a dragon, and a red tail that looked like a lizard's. A pair of black horns rising from her head, and a face so beautiful it felt unreal.
A woman of that mysterious appearance was staring straight at me from only a few meters away.
"Eek?! Wh-who are you?!"
Still sitting on the ground where I had landed on my rear, I shouted.
With her immense height, huge wings, and horns, she took one step closer, then another.
"W-wait a second…! Who are you…?!"
I cried out again in pure terror, but her footsteps never stopped. She came right up to my face.
She was so tall that her shadow completely swallowed my body. The oppressive presence of those great wings, horns, and tail—and the expressionless blue eyes looking down at me—made my neck ache just from tilting my head far enough to meet her gaze.
"I-I'm sorry… Did I somehow offend you?"
"…"
She only stared down at me in silence.
I was terrified.
"I-I'm sorry… Please just spare my life…"
Without meaning to, I began to beg.
"I'm sorry… for daring to catch your eye… I'm so sorry… truly, I'm sorry…"
I was scared. Insanely scared. Her height, the inhuman atmosphere that raised every hair on my body—
"…"
She still answered nothing, her face cold and blank. Maybe someone like me wasn't even worth a reply.
"Hic… sob… I'm sorry… please don't kill me…"
In the end I burst into tears. I pressed my palms together like a fly rubbing its legs and prayed only to be allowed to live.
Her head lowered. She drew closer still.
"Hic… hnn…"
I was terrified. Was she going to eat me? Her breathing was so close it tickled my ear.
"I-I'm… sorry… sob… hic…"
I thought I was about to die. Even this new life in another world was going to end in such a stupid way—
Then her hand closed around my arm.
She pulled me to my feet, and in the next moment—
Whoosh—thud!
My body floated up as she scooped me into her arms as easily as if I were a princess.
Holding me tightly against her chest, she began to stride forward.
"Um… excuse me…?"
"…"
"Where… are you taking me…?"
"…"
She still said nothing. Whether she couldn't hear me, was ignoring me, or simply didn't understand the language—I couldn't tell. She wasn't making any sound at all.
Better not talk any more. I might only make her angry…
Even carrying me she walked with long, effortless strides, and I finally shut my mouth and stayed silent.
After a short while we arrived at the mouth of a cave thick with hanging vines. She brushed the vines aside and walked straight in.
Is this her home?
The thought seemed correct. The interior looked surprisingly cozy. Torches hung on the walls. There was a sword that looked as if it had been carved from bone, a drying rack hung with meat and hides, wooden chests, and something that appeared to be a bed—a heap of feathers, leather, scraps of cloth, and leaves.
D-don't tell me… she's going to butcher me in her own house…?
Fear flooded through me and my whole body began to shake.
But only for a moment. She carefully set me down on what looked like the bed, then—
Fwoosh.
—summoned a small flame in her palm and lit the pile of firewood.
"W-wow…"
So things like this were possible in a fantasy world.
Wait. Summoning fire… huge wings, horns, and a tail…
Could she be a dragon?
In a fantasy otherworld, that wasn't impossible. If she was dragon-kin, her great height made sense.
The fire that rose from the wood began to warm my body, still chilled and soaked from the river.
"Th-thank you… for helping me…"
"…"
I felt pathetic for having been so sure, only moments earlier, that she was going to eat me. She still said nothing, yet she no longer seemed interested in harming me.
Scratch… scrape-scrape.
She crouched down, wrote something on the dirt floor of the cave with her finger, then pointed at it as if telling me to read.
I wondered why she chose writing instead of speech, but that question could wait. I lowered my head to read the words scratched into the earth.
And what they said was…
Please take off your clothes.
I was stunned.
"T-take them off…? Why?"
Hearing me, she wrote again on the dirt and pointed once more.
Hurry and take them off. It's urgent.
"Y-yes?! What do you mean by—"
My body began to tremble on its own.
A-a pervert…? Is she going to… force herself on me…?
I would admit that the woman standing before me was extremely beautiful. But flooring the accelerator this hard, this suddenly, was more than a little overwhelming.
"Ah… um… the clothes… well… haha…"
While I hesitated and stammered,
Whoosh—
"Eek?!"
she roughly seized me and began stripping the clothes from my body.