I woke up to the feeling of wind caressing my skin. Ahh, I’m awake... I can smell plants and earth on the wind. I wonder if I’m in a forest?
Every time the wind blew, I heard leaves rustling and flying about, followed shortly by the sound of birds singing and flapping their wings. It was all so comforting that I was just about to fall back asleep...when I sensed something strange nearby.
That stinks! What in the world is that smell? It doesn’t smell like an animal. It’s more like someone who hasn’t had a bath in years...
Forcing my eyes open, I saw a humanlike creature dressed in dirty clothes, staring down at me and smiling.
It’s smiling, but that’s more like the face of a hunter who just found his prey!
The creature was about thirty meters away. It slowly approached me, taking one step at a time. Now it was about twenty-five meters away. I tried to run, but my body was too weak. I couldn’t even stand up.
Twenty meters. I tried to call out for help, but my throat refused to work and I couldn’t get any words out. Fifteen meters. I looked around to see if there was someone who could help. When the creature saw me do that, it laughed out loud.
Ten meters now. The creature was much bigger and creepier than I’d originally thought. I was scared, but instead of crying felt something more akin to resignation. Only five meters left. The creature held a club as big as a log, and easily raised it up as it laughed. It was easy for me to imagine what was about to happen to me, so I squeezed both eyes shut.
Why in the world did they leave me in a place with monsters like this?! You had one job, gods! How cruel would it be if I died minutes after I was reincarnated?!
As I cursed the gods in my head, the monster was still slowly making its way towards me. The moment it brandished its club, I heard a swishing noise, then a thump, then a rolling sound. It hadn’t brought the club down on me, so I hesitantly opened my eyes. The monster lay right in front of me, with a thick arrow protruding from its chest.
“Man, that was a close one! I certainly wasn’t expecting to find a baby out here. Good thing I decided to check out the noise!” I heard an unfamiliar voice behind me. I still couldn’t move, but at any rate the owner of the voice scooped me up and peered into my face.
The person who picked me up...was a giant.
“What are you doing out here? Where’s your mommy and daddy?” The giant spoke to me in a kind voice, but I couldn’t understand what it was saying. “I wonder if they abandoned you. Poor thing. Well, I can’t just leave you here, so I’ll take you back to my village.” The giant muttered something, then put his bow back in its sling. He gently shifted my weight to carry me again. I began to panic, and flailed as much as I could to try to run away, but the giant didn’t seem to be bothered by my resistance. He just smiled wryly at me.
Eventually I realized the giant wasn’t going to harm me, so I decided to calm down. What else could I do, since I couldn’t move that much anyway?
“You look like a healthy, brave baby. You didn’t even cry when that goblin came for you. You’re going to grow up to be someone great,” the giant said softly. He sounded a bit happy, but just like before, I couldn’t understand him.
After the giant had carried me for about an hour, a village came into view. It was, I assumed, the place where he lived.
“I’m back. Hey, is anybody home?” the giant yelled. Several other giants came over.
“Hey, that was fast. I thought you weren’t going to be home until nighttime. Um...what’s that?” said a male giant, walking towards us. Then a female giant came running over from behind him, and noticed me.
“Where’d you get that baby? He’s very cute... Don’t tell me you kidnapped him!” With a smile, the female giant took me from the arms of the giant that was carrying me.
“Don’t be ridiculous! I found him in the forest just as a goblin was about to get him, so I rescued him. I looked around for a while, but there was no one else out there. I think he might have been abandoned. So I stopped hunting and brought him back here.”
The giant who’d been carrying me seemed to be talking to the female giant. Meanwhile, other giants began to gather around us. As I looked at them, something occurred to me for the first time since I’d woken up.
The gods told me I’d be reborn as a baby. These aren’t giants...they’re just normal-sized humans!
Just then, I spotted something familiar in the corner of my vision. It was an ear. Not a human ear, however, but an animal’s. One of the men had ears that looked like dog ears on top of his head. And it wasn’t just him—several people gathered around us had animal ears too. Some had floppy dog ears, and some had pointed cat ears.
Hm... So demi-humans really do exist. I wonder if they’ll let me touch their ears?
While I was enraptured by the animal ears, the conversation wrapped up. The man who’d rescued me took me back to his home with the woman who seemed to be his wife.
“This will be your home from now on,” she said to me. “You can think of me as your mother.”
“I’ll be his father, then.”
“That’s right, and he’ll... Wait, I wonder what his name is?”
“Is there anything sewn into the blankets he was bundled in?”
“Hang on... Hmm, yes—there is! It says, ‘Tenma Otori.’”
“So he’s got a last name too? I wonder if his parents were nobles or something. I don’t know why they would abandon him, but let’s raise him with this name. Nice to meet you, Tenma!”
“Nice to meet you, Tenma!”
Just like before, I had no idea what they were saying to me. But they seemed friendly and like they’d give me a good home.
Are they gonna be my parents? I’d like that.
In my previous life, both of my parents had died and I didn’t really remember much about them. For that reason, I felt a little grateful to the gods for bringing me here.