I Had Only Gone to Sleep
I had only gone to sleep. That was all. I'd cracked open a beer, enjoyed it, brushed my teeth, washed up, crawled into bed, and drifted off. Nothing more.
And then I simply opened my eyes again.
A silence bordering on chaos unfurled before me. The room blazed with red light, its walls crumpled as if the very space had been wrung out and twisted.
I felt no hangover at all. Or maybe the sensation of having been beaten from head to toe was the hangover.
"...Excuse me...?"
The moment the words left my mouth, I recoiled in shock and clapped a hand over it. My own hand — yet it didn't feel like my hand — sealed an mouth that didn't feel like my mouth.
"...!"
Only then did the gaze that had been sweeping the room drop to my body. An utterly unfamiliar woman's form filled my entire field of vision.
"...Wh-what?"
What the hell?
Goosebumps raced across every inch of my skin. Even the unconscious act of curling in on myself felt terrifying. No matter how I turned it over, I had only drunk a beer and gone to bed. My life hadn't been in danger — I hadn't even gotten properly drunk.
Just one can of beer, then my own room, my own bed.
Stories about people suddenly dropping into other worlds were so familiar by now they barely registered — whether as escapism or pure sensational fantasy.
Of course my mind leapt there first. But just as quickly, I remembered that the real world was far uglier than any story.
Had I been kidnapped?
But I'd fallen asleep at home. The idea that someone had picked my lock, walked in, and hauled me off without any reason was absurd — and yet, somehow, the most realistic explanation available.
The room itself, medical bay in everything but the red lighting, and completely unknown to me, only reinforced that—
No. Then how did I explain my body looking like this?
A sex change? So now the bogeyman who breaks into houses and snatches people at will also needed a sexual fetish bolted on?
No — as far as I knew, you couldn't reshape a fully grown adult's skeleton this completely. Full-body plastic surgery, then?
I pushed myself upright. The shirt of what looked like a uniform came open easily under my fingers, but I found not a single scar.
A secret government experiment? Hypnosis? Had they pumped me full of some drug? Yeah — that was at least halfway plausible. What you'd do with a man convinced he was a woman was anyone's guess, but hadn't there actually been attempts to train psychic soldiers?
More believable than full-body surgery, at least. Or — a little more grotesque — a brain transplant.
I rubbed my chin. Pure habit. The familiar scrape of stubble never came.
Still, the fact that the old habit had surfaced at all was oddly comforting. Proof that I was still me. Looking on the bright side: how many people in the world ever got to experience both sexes?
If this wasn't just a surface imitation... could I get pregnant?
"......"
I shook my head hard. I'd just realized the entire train of thought was nothing but denial.
Whatever the truth, none of this had been done with my consent — so expecting kindness from whoever was responsible would be pure stupidity. They might crack my skull open again just to check the results, slice the brain into specimen slides, or impregnate me to see if the equipment still worked.
Fuck. Low birth rates or not — a sex-change pregnancy? A cold crawl of revulsion ran straight down my spine.
I sat up fully. Something tugged stiffly across my chest; when I checked, sensors straight out of a medical drama were stuck to my skin. They were on firmly, but not implanted. I peeled them free carefully — the sensation of tape coming off skin — and laid the limp sensors on the bed before swinging my legs over the edge.
"Nnh."
The floor was cold. My senses felt sharper than they should have.
The reason the breasts visible through the loose shirt struck me as beautiful was simple: I was still a man.
...Or at least, my brain still was.
"......"
I looked around again. Naturally the door on the far side caught my eye first. A lock was visible, but there was a number pad on the inside as well, so...
...I had no idea. There was almost nothing useful to examine.
Something like a nightstand and a machine that resembled an ECG monitor sat nearby, both flung open as if the whole room had been violently shaken. Even without digging through them, it was obvious nothing useful was inside.
So I walked slowly toward the door. I took the handle carefully and turned it; it rotated smoothly, and the door started to open — I pulled it shut again at once. Caution never hurt. I pressed my ear to the metal and heard footsteps. Several people, running hard.
"Hup—!"
No windows. Nowhere to run. Whether they were even coming for this room, I didn't know—
"Administratoooor?"
My head rang like a struck bell, and the next thing I knew I was on the floor. In plain terms: the door had been yanked open in a panic, and I'd smashed my skull against it.
"Ah — are you all right?"
People are helpless in the face of overwhelming pain. Human experimentation or not, when you drive your head into a steel door, the only thing you can do is clutch your skull and rub the hurt instead of assessing the situation.
Once the worst of it faded, I climbed back onto the bed in case something was wrong — and only then did the woman standing there point at the discarded sensors and let out a long sigh.
"Thank goodness. We thought you'd gone into cardiac arrest..."
"...Ah..."
I'd been too hasty. That possibility hadn't even crossed my mind. I'd just assumed they were props.
"Anyway, Administrator. First, this..."
Administrator?
"...M-me?"
She held out the screen she'd been carrying. The device looked like someone had digitized a corporate file folder into a sleek, futuristic slab — fragile-looking, and already cracked.
"...Uh..."
All sorts of graphics filled the display. Naturally I understood none of it. Only the way it sat in my hand felt faintly familiar.
"So, first — I hate to put it this bluntly, but... the short version is, you're the highest-ranking survivor left, Administrator. That means..."
"......What?"
I had no idea what she was talking about. Some kind of reaction test?
"Everyone above you, starting with the Captain, is dead. The Captain and the First and Third Officers died here. The rest were on Escape Pod One, and that..."
"W-wait, hang on. Wh-what are you saying? Captain? Administrator?"
"...Excuse me?"
The moment I finally voiced the confusion I couldn't hold back, the looks from the woman and everyone around her turned distinctly frightening — enough that I almost forgot the uncanny sense of a room packed entirely with women.
"A-Administrator. You are all right... aren't you?"
Even to my own ears, my voice sounded alien. Of course it did.
Unlike the clichés, there was no starter pack. No status window. No rush of the original owner's memories flooding into my brain.
Just a perfectly ordinary office worker who knew absolutely nothing — and everything in front of me was far too heavy for that person to carry.
"......"
"Um, unnie. You really don't remember?"
A long time later. We had left the room where I'd woken and moved to what they said had been my original quarters. Even walking the corridor had been a shock. Anyone could see it was the interior of a spaceship straight out of a science-fiction film.
"...N-no. I don't..."
Soyeon — who had introduced herself as the person closest and dearest to me here (she stressed that part heavily) — made a face that looked disappointed. Or, more honestly, like she was completely fucked.
From a glass-pane device, logs and recorded audio from what must have been boarding or launch began to play. No video.
A hollow thunk sounded, and Soyeon stopped the playback.
"That was the moment... I'm sorry. I should have held on to you..."
She looked ready to cry at any second, so I only told her it was fine. Whether it actually was, I had no way of knowing.
There was almost nothing I could know. At best, the fact that my voice had been the one leading the evacuation call suggested I'd held some kind of rank.
"......"
More than anything, none of it felt real yet.
Knock knock. The sound came from right beside me. Soyeon, who had been pressed against my entire side without my quite registering it, bolted upright and went straight to the door. Looking back, the distance between us had been almost nonexistent.
Close enough that I wondered, for a second, whether we might have been dating.
"...Mm."
The woman who entered had hair cropped short enough that, at a glance, she could have been mistaken for a man. Her face left no room for that mistake — but the sharp, predatory cast of her features was still more than enough to inspire fear. At least for the woman I was now.
"Ah, Deputy Administrator. Is the Administrator...?"
"Yes, yes. She's fine. What's this about...?"
"..."
"..."
The two of them whispered together for a long while. Just as I started thinking the atmosphere meant I ought to run, Soyeon turned back and spoke.
"...Administrator. There's, um, a bit of a problem. Would you come with us?"
It was still too absurd to feel real, so I considered refusing. Lulling someone into a false sense of safety before the torture starts is an old cliché — and an easy way to break a person.
Even if the short-haired woman's hand drifting toward her holster as her eyes followed mine put a stop to that idea before it went anywhere.