Reborn!
I had just died.
The cause of death: cardiac arrest. I walked in on the childhood friend who lived next door — the girl I'd been secretly in love with — having sex with my own father, and the shock of it knocked me out cold. I never came back.
It was so absurd that not even tears would come.
"Anyway... where is this?"
When I came to, I seemed to be drifting in something pitch-dark and lightless, floating in water, or so it felt. No — scratch that. I could breathe, so "water" wasn't quite it. It felt more like being adrift in outer space.
Not that I'd ever ridden a spaceship.
Slosh, slosh. I flailed my arms and legs about to see if anything was out there, but nothing touched back. Nothing to see. Nothing to feel.
Was I even breathing in the first place?
...
I wanted to hold on to some thought, any thought, but I could feel my consciousness going blurry at the edges. It was like my brain was leaking out through my ears. How old had I been? What was my name again? Everything was fading to haze.
Eh. Whatever, really. It didn't feel as bad as I'd expected it to.
"U... Uwaaah—wah..!!"
At some point — I couldn't tell you when — a colossal eye had appeared in the pitch-black void, and it was staring me down.
...
Its owner simply kept staring. That eye was so enormous it raised goosebumps all over me, and yet at the same time it was so beautiful that, before I knew it, I found myself staring right back.
Before long, the great eye curved into what looked like a smile — and then I was being sucked away somewhere, like bathwater from an unplugged tub.
"U... Uwaaahhh!!"
At some point the darkness gave way to a blinding white light that lit up everything around me. It was so bright I nearly screamed out loud. My eyes opened, but everything was a blur — I couldn't make out a single thing.
"...Aburaphija! Orumorine!"
Someone was talking to me — words I couldn't understand. It sounded like a foreign language I'd never heard once in my life. Not a word of it registered. And above all, it was loud. Why was my whole body so damp, too?
"...Waaahh!!"
I tried to spit a curse at that thoroughly unpleasant sensation, but no curse would come out.
"Uuh..! Uuh..!!"
Hold on. I tried to speak and couldn't. In my head the words came out perfectly clear, but the moment they reached my lips they dissolved into baby babble.
Smack, smack. Then someone began giving my bottom light little pats.
Getting handsy with a full-grown man's ass!
The shame alone wrung the tears out of me.
"WAAHHH!!!"
After a good long cry, I found myself cradled in a pair of large arms — and for some reason, it felt familiar. Comforting, even.
"Pulreina. Hobie."
Whatever was holding me murmured something, but of course I couldn't understand it. Still, I knew instinctively that the words were kindly meant — a tender voice, like a parent cooing over a child. Wrapped in that warmth, in that gentle tone, I drifted off once more.
I came to again. My damp body had been patted dry at some point and swaddled in something warm and cloth-like. It was like being shrink-wrapped from head to toe — and yet, strangely, it didn't feel half bad.
I still couldn't see. Couldn't talk, either. But when I cried from hunger, something soft would find its way into my mouth, and the moment I started sucking, a rich, nutty-sweet liquid would flow out. When I soiled myself, someone wiped my bottom clean.
That's right. I had been reborn.
As for the details... ah, forget it — I was hungry. Time to wail.
"Waaah—!"
Two weeks went by before I finally opened my eyes. Looking around, I found walls and a ceiling made of wood — an "environmentally friendly" room, about as far removed from any modern building as you could get. And above all...
"Amurije. Hobie?"
A breathtakingly beautiful blonde woman was gazing down at me as if I were the most precious thing in the world. Her ears, on top of everything, were long. She looked exactly like an elf.
She lifted me up, tucked me into the crook of her arm, and began loosening her ragged clothes.
"Buerno... Hora."
Out they came — an enormous pair of breasts. Big enough to dwarf my head, tipped with pink nipples. And beaded at their tips, a drop of white.
Gulp.
Drool running down my chin, I latched onto a nipple and began to suck.
"Hnn..!"
The woman hunched her shoulders and flushed red, then reached down to stroke my head.
Ahh... that familiar, tender touch. This elf, it seemed, was my mother.
But—
Mother or not, I was still a man — a man with every last memory of his past life intact. To think I'd get to nurse from a beauty... any cock would be standing at full mast by now...
And yet there I was, unmistakably sucking on a gorgeous woman's nipple, while my nether regions sat there hollow and unresponsive.
Not that I felt nothing. The lust was definitely there.
But the one part that actually mattered was nowhere to be felt.
I'd learn the reason why soon enough — the next time I took a dump.
No way... I'd been born a girl...
Never saw it coming. Not in my wildest dreams. I'd spent my whole life as a man, so I'd blithely assumed I'd be reborn as one — and that complacent assumption was what did me in.
As I lay there with my eyes closed, still reeling from the shock, something poked me in the cheek. The same little culprit, I realized, that had kept prodding my cheek back when I couldn't see at all.
When I opened my eyes, a genuinely handsome man was peering down at me, oozing affection. Early twenties, maybe. Brown hair, with striking blue eyes.
"Buer. Orina!"
With a dopey grin plastered across his face, the man kept kneading my cheek like putty.
"Uuh!"
I waited for an opening and chomped down on his finger — but with not a single tooth to my name, my assault apparently registered as pure cuteness. He didn't so much as flinch.
"Uerme. Aritona."
My elf mother appeared, cupped the man's cheek in her hand, and beamed a happy smile. Judging by their reactions, the man poking my cheek was my father.
And so time flowed on. I could crawl now.
With mobility finally secured, I decided to go check out the spaces I'd never been able to reach. After nosing around this corner and that, one fact became clear: wherever this was, conditions were abysmal. The floor was filthy, and cold air seeped in through the gaps in the walls. Mom and Dad both wore what were basically rags, too, so we clearly weren't a family with money. Poor, if anything.
"Eee! Eee!"
Crawling along, I caught sight of my reflection in a shard of glass lying on the floor. Mom's golden hair. Dad's blue eyes. Skin pale as fresh snow, and features that were sharp and lovely even on a baby.
Grow up like this, and I'd without a doubt become the kind of beauty who leaves a trail of weeping men behind her.
"Aris! Omoedra!"
Mom came up behind me, scooped me into her arms, and said something. I still couldn't understand a word of it...
Aris. The word Mom and Dad kept saying, over and over.
That was my name.
"Eee! Eee!"
I wanted to keep exploring, but alas — I was laid down in a bed and put to sleep whether I liked it or not. For all its mobility, this body slept way too much...
Zzz...
Time went on, and I turned five.
"Aris! It's cold outside, so play in here today, alright?"
By now I could understand most of what was said to me.
"Ommie! Awis wanna pway owtside!"
I did my best to pronounce everything properly, but my tongue was still too short — nothing came out right.
"...Then you're only playing right out front of the house. Got it?"
"Mm..! Onwy pway wight out fwont!!"
And with that, I toddled out the door.
Stepping outside, the first thing to greet my eyes was a vast field. Identical shanty-like buildings stood at even intervals, ringed by farmland, and in those fields people wearing the same ragged clothes were bent over, working the soil.
Same houses. Same clothes. And now that I could follow what people were saying, I'd picked up one more fact: our family wasn't merely poor.
We were slaves.
My parents were slaves, and so their child — me — had been born a slave as well.
"Haah..."
"Aris! What's the matter?"
As I sat there lamenting my sorry lot in life, a blue-haired boy came over and spoke to me. It was Eric, son of the slave couple next door — two years my senior.
"Ah... Big Bwo Ewick... it's nuffin'."
I still wasn't used to calling anyone "Big Bro." It was like my spine coiling up inside me in quiet refusal.
"Yeah? Even so — if anything ever comes up, you tell Big Bro Eric everything!"
Eric thumped his chest with his little fists and puffed his shoulders up high.
"Mmhm... fank oo, Big Bwo Ewick."
My smile turned his face scarlet; he whipped his head away and fished something that looked like a potato out of his clothes, handing it over.
Cute kid. He must have a crush on me.
Being pretty really does make life easier, huh. All it takes is a smile, and food appears without me so much as lifting a finger.
The people here were fairly good-looking to begin with, but my face — along with Mom's and Dad's — sat a cut above even that crowd. Born between the two of them, naturally I'd come out pretty.
But what good was being pretty? I liked women.
"Aris—! Come inside now!"
At Mom's call I zipped back into the house and straight into her arms. I mashed my face into her ample chest, nuzzled for all I was worth, played the spoiled baby, and squeezed tight.
"Ommie..! Awis wants milkies..!"
Unable to refuse her adorable five-year-old daughter blinking up at her with those sparkling eyes, the mother undid her clothes and offered her breast.
"Honestly, Aris... there's hardly any milk left in these anymore, you know... Hnn..!"
I popped the pink nipple into my mouth, rolled it around with my tongue, and sucked away to my heart's content.
Reincarnating into another world is the best..!
"Aris! Look at this! I caught a rabbit, see..!"
Before I knew it, Eric had turned seventeen, and he came bounding up to me, short blue hair whipping in the wind.
"Hm? What's this... You giving it to me?"
Eric flushed crimson and handed me the rabbit. It was dead, blood trickling from its mouth.
"That damn Eric..! I'm telling you, every single thing that boy catches goes straight to Aris..!"
Eric's father, Derick, scratched at his head as he watched his son play the fool.