The Examination
I had been lying on that stark white floor for the better part of an hour. The researchers who had been talking among themselves were long gone, and I was left alone. Honestly, the forest inside the gate had felt far more comfortable. Something about being surrounded by trees set my mind at ease.
Before long, though, I heard someone coming down. I pressed myself flat against the mirror inside the isolation room and watched to see who it was.
Was there another creature they'd dragged in, the way they'd dragged me? I steadied my pounding heart and looked—only to find it was just the researchers, hauling something like a mat.
Four of them carried it toward me. I watched in silence. At last they stopped at the door, unlocked it, and came in with the mat, bringing it into the isolation room that had, by now, become mine.
They seemed to be spreading the mat across the floor. Good thinking. Sleeping on this hard floor was child abuse, no matter how I looked at it. Forget a floor like this—a fluffy mattress was essential.
But do I really have to sleep here...?
They didn't even seem aware of me. They set the mat down and fell to talking among themselves. As the conversation turned to tomorrow's experiment, I inched toward the door, crawling as quietly as I could.
The only chance I had was while they weren't paying attention. Nearly there, I stopped crawling, got up on two feet, and bolted through the door.
Freedom!
Three seconds into that freedom, I was caught again. The moment I stepped outside, Kim Bora spotted me, hooked both hands under my arms, and dangled me in the air as she carried me straight back into the isolation room.
"Quit chatting and keep an eye on Hana. Look how little attention you're paying—she was about to walk right out."
Kim Bora set me gently back down inside, then said it. So my name had already been decided: Hana. She'd done the same thing earlier, talking as if that were simply what I was called. I wanted to tell them my real name. Only... what was my real name again?
Maybe it was because I'd woken up in a different body all at once. I definitely still had memories of being a man, but the details wouldn't come. My brain had probably turned as childish as the rest of me, and it couldn't hold on to things properly. This wasn't how you got dementia, was it?
I watched the researchers with a sulky pout. I'd tried to get out, and they'd caught me on the spot. Humiliating. Furious, I pummeled the leg of the researcher they called Kim Bora with my fists, thump, thump. I didn't have the strength for it, though, and she seemed to take it as me being cute. She laughed and stroked my head.
The head pats felt so nice that I broke into a silly grin—and then snapped out of it. These people had kidnapped me. I couldn't go showing them I'd already surrendered.
I hurriedly hid how much I'd liked it and backed well away. Stick close, and I didn't have a single way to win.
"Come to think of it, has the air in here always been this fresh? It's an isolation room, but it feels like I'm standing in a forest full of trees."
Kim Bora breathed in as deeply as she could, as if the air pleased her, and said it like that.
"You're imagining it. The air purifier in this room runs all the time. That's probably why."
"No. What if it's this creature's ability?"
With that, Kim Bora looked over at me where I was huddled in the corner. Every eye suddenly seemed to land on me. I flinched, startled, and turned my back. If I did that, they wouldn't see how flustered I was, right?
"Or maybe not?"
Kim Bora didn't sound convinced.
They brought in a pillow and a blanket as well, and then the researchers left my room. Kim Bora waved on her way out, and the place that had been noisy and chaotic until a moment ago went quiet.
It felt as if far too much had happened in a single day. They were going to run experiments on me tomorrow, but I wasn't a researcher, and even listening in, there wasn't much I could understand. They kept using strange terminology, and I was neither a doctor nor a scientist. There was no way for me to make sense of it.
I lay down slowly on the mat, felt sleep rushing in, and drifted off. They'd even turned out the lights for me. Aside from the red lamps installed along the corridor, there was no light at all. Everything around me went pitch-dark. Only the occasional sound of machinery echoed through the silent room.
I slept, and the next day I was woken by a murmur of voices. I'd slept so deeply I hadn't even noticed the lights come on. For the first time in a long while I felt refreshed as I sat up in bed. From outside the isolation room, that sight drew a chorus of oohs.
"So that's the humanoid life-form..."
"She's adorable."
"Look how soft those cheeks are..."
"Doesn't she look just like an elf out of a novel? The ears aren't pointed, of course, but..."
The researchers from yesterday were nowhere to be seen. In their place, people in all different clothes stared through the glass at me sitting up, as if I were an exhibit at the zoo.
I felt like the panda at some amusement park. Wave an arm, take a single step, and they watched even that with another round of oohs and aahs.
The attention put me in a bad mood, so I went back to bed. I pulled the blanket over my head and prayed they would leave already. Yesterday had been better. There were too many people today; just sitting still, I felt myself trembling. I had never been this tense in my life.
I couldn't stay hidden under the blanket forever, though. Some of the researchers came into my room, took hold of me—blanket and all—and hauled me off somewhere. Putting yesterday's conversation together, I was probably being taken in for an examination.
The building was so enormous that it took about thirty minutes just to reach the area with the examination equipment. Never had I resented my short legs so much.
Partway there I got too tired to keep walking and plopped down, and someone hoisted me up and carried on. Couldn't they just take a car or something? Nobody had said you couldn't drive one indoors.
Once we reached the examination room, they started with the simple tests. Maybe out of consideration for how scared I was, Kim Bora stayed beside me the whole time and kept supporting me.
Whenever I fussed, she gave me a piece of candy. I hadn't fussed because of the candy, but still—once I ate the sweet thing, I felt my mood improve.
They measured my height and weight. I came in at four foot five and sixty-six pounds, a staggering difference from the body I used to have. I had been an adult, full adult height and weight, and now I'd turned into a little kid like this... Seeing myself in the mirror had already been strange enough. Having it measured directly by the instruments made it certain: I really had changed.
All the hard muscle I'd once had was gone. What filled my body instead was something soft, and skin that, if you tugged it, stretched out long like dough. Looked at a certain way, I'd gone from rough old skin to a smooth, milk-white complexion. Wasn't that a gain?
I went along with test after test—until one arrived that I absolutely could not cooperate with. A blood draw. Someone came slowly toward me with a sharp needle in hand, and it felt like the Grim Reaper approaching.
"Eeeeeeng!"
I was so genuinely terrified that I latched onto Kim Bora's leg and mounted a last stand, as if I would never, ever go. If it was a blood draw or death, they could just kill me! Kim Bora, however, took one look at me and laughed.
I was being completely serious, and she laughed! I felt the faint goodwill I'd held toward Kim Bora tick down and vanish. I'd liked her for giving me candy, and I had never imagined she would betray me like this.
They must have expected me to run. I tore away from Kim Bora and tried to flee, and failed. In the end, wearing a face that was about to crumple into tears, I had no choice but to let them draw my blood.
The sharp needle wavered right in front of my eyes, and I couldn't look at it with a clear head. All I could do was squeeze both eyes shut and pray this moment would pass quickly.
If I actually watched it pierce my skin and the blood come welling up, I might faint. That was how mortally dangerous a blood draw was. Then again... hadn't I had this done plenty of times before?
The thought struck me, and I understood. A blood draw was nothing! I opened the eyes I'd shut and resolved to watch the needle break my skin. I was not someone who backed down over a thing like this.
But the instant the needle bit into me, I had no choice but to cry with everything I had. Contrary to what I'd thought, it hurt far, far too much.