Waking Up in a Glass Tube
In the depths of a dim chamber filled with the mechanical whirring of countless scrap-metal contraptions, where noisy static scattered in every direction, there stood a single glass tube radiating a light more serene and pure than anything else in the room.
“Huuuuh… slept like a log…”
I yawned widely and rubbed my crusty eyes. After a late night at the office, I’d trudged home and cracked open one of the canned beers I’d saved in the fridge. My body had always been resistant to hangovers. I’d drunk it just to enjoy a lazy weekend sleep-in, yet for some reason this morning I woke up feeling impossibly refreshed—far more than a nearly thirty-year-old body had any right to be. It was like my body had returned to its teenage years. Reveling in that blissful sensation, I shifted my upper body to get out of bed.
“Ack!”
A loud thunk echoed as my forehead slammed into something. The sound of glass being struck rang out.
“Ugh… what the hell…”
The sudden pain chased away the last traces of sleep. As my vision cleared, I stopped complaining and stared blankly upward.
“A glass tube…?”
Because my body was inside an unidentified glass cylinder.
Once the drowsiness fully vanished, my first thought was for my own safety. It was only human instinct to check your physical condition after waking up kidnapped in an unfamiliar place. And it was only natural that my hyper-sensitive senses immediately noticed something was off—specifically, that the voice coming out of my throat was a high-pitched little girl’s.
“What the… why does my voice sound like this?!”
I frantically placed a hand on my neck, but instead of the sturdy Adam’s apple of a grown man, I felt a slender, fragile throat and soft skin that seemed like it would snap with the slightest pressure. Unable to comprehend the situation, I didn’t even notice my hands were trembling as I used the glass tube encasing me like a mirror to examine my body. The result was something I simply could not process.
“A little girl…?”
What the glass reflected wasn’t the healthy thirty-something young man I should have been, but a girl who looked like she’d stepped straight out of a heavily photoshopped YouTube thumbnail. Crimson hair you’d never see in Korea, ruby-like red eyes that seemed embedded with actual gemstones, a beauty so perfect she looked more like a painting than a real person. That was me, reflected in the glass.
“Is this some kind of virtual reality…?”
If not, there was no way I’d wake up looking like this girl… Ugh… Unable to believe what I was seeing, I reached toward the glass tube that showed my reflection. A sudden headache struck, and memories I had never seen before flooded into my mind.
“This is…”
They were the memories of this body’s original owner. Like a bursting dam, they rushed in and churned through my own memories.
“Ugh…”
As I clutched my head, those invading memories naturally blended with my own. Once the process finished, the painful headache that had tormented me disappeared as well.
“Finally, I can breathe again.”
My back was drenched in cold sweat, but I wiped the beads of perspiration from my forehead, grateful the headache was gone. I let out a light sigh and looked at my reflection in the glass tube once more. This time, the red-haired girl staring back felt a little more familiar. The reason I wasn’t completely used to it yet was probably because the memories that had poured in with the headache were incomplete. They weren’t really memories at all—just fragments of information.
Still, the silver lining was that those fragments were actually quite useful.
“Plea… Plea, huh… Now that’s a name straight out of some isekai story.”
This body—my body now—was named Plea. I wanted to scream about how ridiculously chuuni that name was, but the place I’d woken up in wasn’t Korea to begin with. It wasn’t even Earth. The world I’d awakened in was the kind you only read about in novels—an isekai. More precisely, it was the world of the game I used to play.
“This is insane…”
I’d gone to sleep drunk and woken up possessing a character inside a game. The unbelievable reality made me drag a hand down my face, but of course that didn’t magically transport me back to my bed. If anything, it only made everything feel more real.
“So… how the hell am I supposed to live from now on?”
One of the things I learned while sorting through the memories was that this place was a research facility that extracted magical power using my abilities. That’s right—mana. The same supernatural energy that appears in every fantasy story you’ve ever seen. This world belonged to a game called Psycho Bridge 2033, an infamous piece of trash.
True to its name, the game’s setting revolved around espers who wielded mana. Three hundred years ago, this super-energy called mana was discovered, and all sorts of research followed. In the process, people born with mana—espers—appeared. They gained supernatural powers that surpassed human understanding. Some of them were consumed by their own mana and became demons, monsters that slaughtered people and caused massive societal damage. The espers who still retained their humanity rose up to protect ordinary citizens by subduing those who had lost themselves. It was basically a hero story.
Naturally, the world was full of research institutes dealing with mana. Among them were inhumane facilities run by the demons. But the lab I was in wasn’t one of those. This was a state-approved research institute that studied my mana. In other words, the government was backing it.
Even worse, my memories clearly contained a contract agreeing to mana extraction, along with an image of myself stamping it. Which meant…
“Why the hell did I mortgage fifty years of my life to a lab…?”
For the next fifty years, I was doomed to stay here and live as a mana dispenser, constantly having my power sucked out of me.
You have possessed the character Plea.
Current location: National Mana Research Facility – Isolation Chamber
Remaining contract duration: 50 years
“Now that I think about it, didn’t a new child enter the lab today?”
“Are you referring to Plea, sir?”
“Yes, Plea. That was the name…”
On the top floor of the research facility where Plea had awakened, the director—who was essentially the master of this place—stroked his rough beard as he recalled the girl he had met a month ago. A girl with sorrowful, lifeless eyes. He had been director here for nearly ten years now. He had seen plenty of horrible things in that time, yet he still couldn’t get used to seeing a child with such a dead expression. Especially knowing it was because of his own orders.
“Such a pitiful child.”
“It is for the good of the nation.”
The secretary’s utterly mechanical reply made the director pull a tired face and wave his hand dismissively.
“I know that, so you don’t have to hammer it in. How long do you think I’ve been doing this job?”
The position of director here required putting national interest above personal feelings. He stuffed his emotions into a small square box in the corner of his heart and carefully examined the documents the secretary had handed him.
“Let’s see here… The little one’s ability is nuclear fusion, was it? She awakened something incredible.”
The director skimmed the report and widened his eyes in genuine admiration. The numbers listed for her ability were simply too high to believe they belonged to a newly awakened esper.
“Whoa… Mana capacity unmeasurable, internal mana volume also unmeasurable, control… still unknown. Even these numbers alone would let her crush most heroes, wouldn’t they?”
“On paper, yes.”
“I know that much. There’s no way a kid who’s never even thrown a punch, let alone had a real fight, could beat heroes who clash with demons every day. Still, it’s fun to imagine.”
After all, pointless VS debates were the most entertaining kind. The director’s mind was already running wild with deathmatches between Plea and the nation’s strongest heroes—the 5 Greats. The outcome was obvious, of course.
Hmm… No matter who it is, all I can picture is Plea getting scared, crying, and getting beaten up…
Plea was only seven years old. In contrast, every one of the 5 Greats was a battle-hardened veteran. Even if the spec difference wasn’t huge, Plea’s experience was far too lacking.
At that age, she probably doesn’t even have much life experience, let alone combat experience…
That was why the director decided to give Plea a small advantage.
In that case… what if I gave her combat experience equivalent to a C-rank hero?
It was simple curiosity. He wondered what would happen if that incredible hardware called Plea received just a bit of software. Pretending to read the documents the secretary had given him, the director kept running simulations in his head. When the imagined battle between Plea and the 5 Greats finally ended, he let out an awed “Ohhh” in genuine surprise.
This doesn’t make sense… She only has combat experience equivalent to a C-rank hero, yet she’s evenly matched with the 5 Greats?
With nothing but raw output, she had reached parity with the 5 Greats. The hardware was even more powerful than he’d thought. Of course, there was no way his combat simulations were wrong. He had once been a hero himself, standing at the forefront of demon subjugation, so his mental battle simulations were quite reliable.
“Interesting…”
“What is, sir?”
When the secretary tilted her head, the director pondered for a moment before speaking.
“Say, isn’t it about time for that child named Plea to wake up?”
“Yes. Mana extraction is complete, so she is scheduled to awaken in approximately six hours.”
“Then… I’d like to have a conversation with this Plea.”