Kaoru Nagase, twenty-two years old.
An office lady with silky black hair that came down to her shoulder blades, stood at 158 centimeters tall (perfectly appropriate for her age), and always had a slightly—okay, a REALLY harsh look in her eyes. She’d graduated with a degree in science at a national university and found a job at a medium-sized company back in her hometown. It’d been half a year since she started her convenient life of commuting from home to her job, much to the joy of her parents, while she saved up money.
She had a family of five, consisting of her parents, a brother two years older than her, and a sister who was three years younger. They all got along well, though her little sister Yuki seemed a bit disappointed not gaining complete control over the room they shared even after Kaoru found a job.
She’d finally gotten used to her work and was coming back home after finishing an hour and a half’s worth of overtime. Despite this, and without warning, Kaoru felt like she was about to lose consciousness, stopping where she stood.
Not good, not good... If I fall over and hit my head or something, I’m done for. Falling over would be bad, so I’m just gonna crouch down slowly...
But even without crouching down, the feeling of dizziness had passed in an instant. Just as Kaoru turned forward to start walking again, thinking it was a slight bout of vertigo caused by low blood pressure or something...she froze in place.
“What...is this...?”
The area in front of her—no, everything around her was completely white. An area devoid of anything else spread out before her. As she was frozen in place and unable to comprehend what was going on, a voice came from behind her:
“You must be Kaoru Nagase, right?”
Surprised, Kaoru turned around to find a man who appeared to be in his mid-twenties. He had golden hair and blue eyes, and was sort of like the physical embodiment of what every woman would consider to be a “good man.” He wore a white outfit that seemed like something an aristocrat from ancient Rome would wear, with a gentle smile spreading across his face.
Uh-oh, this doesn’t look good...
Kaoru was a fan of light novels, so she had a feeling she knew where this was going. The man introduced himself as “someone in charge of watching over this world,” like she’d been expecting him to. Put simply, it was like he was what humans would call “God,” or at least something close to it.
According to “God” here, this whole incident was supposedly the result of some sort of accident. The world as we knew it actually existed along multiple space-time continuums (basically parallel worlds) as part of a “multiverse.” These parallel worlds usually existed without interference from each other, but every once in a while a space-time anomaly or energy deviation or the like would cause different space-times to approach and affect each other. If these events took the form of small holes or cracks in the space-time continuum, then they could be taken care of by dealing with the problem ASAP. At worst, however, these events could end up involving multiple worlds, and turn into a disaster of epic proportions.
To protect against such events, there existed a race of beings beyond humanity’s wildest imagination, beings who were so far advanced that they could only be called “Gods.” These beings watched over the worlds and adjusted the balance of space-time as necessary. Because of that, any anomalies or deviations were spotted in a timely manner, which were then dispersed and taken care of before the anomalies could reach disaster levels.
The incident this time was a result of this man going to disperse a small anomaly, just as he always did; unluckily for Kaoru, she’d gotten caught up in it as well. Her physical body had taken heavy damage, and though God had rushed to recover her consciousness and soul, Kaoru was already considered dead back on Earth.
“I’m sorry, I’m so terribly sorry! I’ve never made a mistake like this in all my thousands of years doing this...”
The man who claimed to be God appeared to be truly sorry as he bowed his head and apologized in earnest. A bitter smile crossed Kaoru’s face, as if to say these sorts of things just happened.
“I mean, you know, it’s fine... Well, no, it’s not, but there’s no way around it now, right? You just made a little mistake when doing your job of watching over the world. I guess I had a bit of bad luck this time too, that’s all.”
With a light laugh, Kaoru explained how it didn’t hurt and that she hadn’t suffered when it happened. All humans had to die eventually. But God had a pained expression on his face.
“I’m humbled to hear you say that... However, as the supervisor for this world, it’s evident that I must take measures to aid you. As luck would have it, I succeeded in preserving your consciousness and soul, so it’s possible to have you live a new life through the reconstruction of your physical body.”
“Wait, you can bring me back to life? Like, back to the same life I had before?” Kaoru asked him out of surprise.
But God shook his head regretfully. “I’m sorry... Your physical body has already been declared deceased and, erm...taken care of... This world is very finely tuned, so if I were to use my powers to forcefully intervene, there’s a chance its balance would collapse and cause a massive distortion.”
Aw man... So that means there’s no place for me there anymore... If I try forcing my way back in, then I’d just be causing trouble for everyone.
Kaoru had quickly come to terms with the situation she’d been placed in.
“My recommendation would be to start a new life in a different world. Even if we were to use a bit of excessive force on a world that hasn’t progressed as far, nothing much would change. And, luckily enough, there’s one such unadjusted world that’s quite similar to Earth... It’s likely that the same world split off at some point in the distant past due to a massive spatial distortion. My guess is that this resulted in a substantial migration of flora and fauna between the two, likely on a continental scale, and, as a result, the people, plants, and animals generally appear to be the same. The civilization there is far behind that of Earth, something akin to medieval Europe, but it’s a world where you could still live comfortably as a human.”
God seemed desperate to send Kaoru off to another world. On top of there being no better way to go about this, it seemed he wanted to atone for his mistake and make it up to Kaoru, so of course he would be desperate...
Understanding this, Kaoru resigned herself and agreed.
“I understand. It doesn’t seem like there are any other good ideas besides that, so I’ll take you up on your offer.”
“Oh, thank you! Then I’ll start the preparations right—”
“Ah, hold on a second!”
Though he seemed relieved and in a rush to start the preparations, Kaoru managed to reign God back in.
“The medieval world is far more dangerous than the modern world, right? Injuries, disease, crime, wars—those sorts of things would be more rampant. I don’t think a girl who doesn’t have a clue what’s going on, being thrust into the middle of all that by herself, would be able to scrape by. Like, at all. At best, I would end up as a slave or in a brothel. At worst, I could be dead the same day I arrive...”
“...”
A bead of sweat ran down God’s temple to his cheek. Kaoru couldn’t imagine his body having been built with such a bodily function, so he was most likely doing it on purpose to show some sort of psychological reaction. That was some real attention to detail.
“Because of that...” Kaoru stuck her pointer finger right at God. “I’d like to request some sort of cheat powers!”
“Ch-Cheat...powers...?” He didn’t seem to have a clue what was going on.
“That’s right, cheat powers! If a girl like me, who won’t know left from right, is going to live in this new world by herself, I’m going to need some special abilities, don’t you think? Oh! I’ll need to be able to understand the language and writing system over there as well. And since it’ll be a more uncivilized world, I guess the age women can get married at would be a lot lower too. So if you don’t make me a bit younger, I don’t think I’ll be able to live a happy life, you know...?”
Kaoru’s life was on the line here, so she was going to take this opportunity to go all in.
“Y-Yes... I don’t completely understand...but very well. Reconstruction of your physical body and granting you powers falls under the authority of whomever is the supervisor for that world, so I’ll be sure to request they take care of you beforehand. You can talk over the details with them once you arrive.”
“Please and thank you! Oh, and there are two favors I’d like to ask while I’m still here. Is that all right?”
God nodded, agreeing to Kaoru’s request. “As long as they don’t lead to any problems, then yes, anything you like. You have that right, after all.”
“In that case... First, as long as it doesn’t make me appear too different from the other humans in this new world, I want to take the body I have now—or, well, the body I had—and make it younger. I never got a chance to repay my parents back on Earth, so I was thinking I’d like to do that now by leaving their genes in this new world. Though, that’s only if I manage to get married and leave grandchildren for them...”
While Kaoru laughed, God’s eyes were wide open, as if this came as a complete shock to him.