...It’s so hot. It hurts. I hate thiiis...
A child’s voice cried out directly into my head, filled with pain and suffering.
Well, what do you want me to do about that? I had no idea what to do, and over time the voice grew increasingly quiet.
The moment I realized I couldn’t hear the child’s voice anymore, the bubble-esque thing that had been encapsulating me disappeared with a burst, and I felt my consciousness slowly rising up.
At the same time, I felt a hot fever and pain spread throughout my body as if I had been afflicted with influenza. I nodded and agreed with the child, This certainly is hot and it certainly does hurt. I hate it too.
But the child’s voice didn’t reply.
It was so hot. I tried moving around to find a colder spot in the bed. Maybe due to the fever, I couldn’t move my body like I wanted to. But I struggled on regardless, and in the process of wiggling my body, heard the sound of something like paper and grass rubbing together beneath me.
“...What’s that noise?” My throat should’ve been sore due to the fever, but a childish and high-pitched voice came out of my mouth. It was clearly not my own voice, and it sounded just like the child’s voice that I’d heard in my head a second ago.
I wanted to keep sleeping since the fever was making me feel so sluggish, but I couldn’t ignore the fact that I was in an unfamiliar bed and that my voice wasn’t my own, so I slowly lifted my heavy eyelids.
My fever must have been enormous, as my eyes were wet and my vision twisted. Thankfully, though, my tears were apparently serving as makeshift lenses, as I could see far farther than I usually could without my glasses.
“Wha?” For some reason, I could see the small, unhealthy-looking hand of a child stretched out in front of me. Weird. My hand should be a lot bigger than this. I have the hands of an adult, not a small, malnourished child.
I could move the child’s hand like my own, clenching and opening it. This body that I could move at will was not my own. The sheer shock of that revelation made my mouth dry up. “...What’s, happening?”
Making sure to keep the tears from dipping out of my wet eyes, I moved my gaze around while keeping my head still. It didn’t take long to notice that I wasn’t in my own room. The bed beneath me was hard and lacked a mattress; it was using cushions made of something prickly and rough instead. The dirty blanket thrown over me had a weird smell, and my whole body was itchy as if it were infested with fleas or bedbugs.
“Hold on, wait... Where am I?” My last memory was getting crushed by an avalanche of books, and it wasn’t likely I had been rescued in the nick of time. At the very least, I was sure no hospital in Japan would treat patients on such a filthy bed. What’s going on?
“I... I definitely died, right?” All signs pointed to yes. I had died being crushed by books. That earthquake was at best a three or four on the Richter scale. It wasn’t the kind of earthquake that killed people. So my death had definitely ended up on the news, something like, “A college girl nearing graduation was crushed to death by books in her own home.”
...That’s so embarrassing! I died twice that day, once physically and once socially. I felt so embarrassed I tried rolling around on the bed, but out of fear for my heavy and pained head, I decided to double facepalm instead.
“I mean, okay, I definitely joked about it. I definitely thought that, if I was going to die, I may as well die getting crushed by books. I honestly did think it’d be better than dying a slow death on a hospital bed.” But this was all wrong. I had dreamed of a happy death at the end of a life surrounded by books. I honestly hadn’t expected an earthquake to happen and crush me to death so soon.
“This is awful. I’d just gotten hired, too. Oooh, my sweet college library...” In this troubled age of high unemployment, I had just managed to land a job in a college library. Through guts and determination to fulfill my dream of a happy life surrounded by books, I passed all the necessary tests and interviews and finally secured victory. This job would involve spending far more time around books than any other, and the library even had plenty of old books and documents.
My mom, who worried more about me than anyone else, even started crying after hearing the news. “That’s wonderful. Urano, you actually found a respectable, good job. I’m so proud of you,” she’d said, tears dripping out of her eyes. And days after that, I just up and die?
My mind drifted to thoughts of how my mother must have cried after learning of my death. She, the mother I’d never meet again, would definitely be mad. I could say with confidence that at some point she’d screamed, “How many times did I tell you to get rid of some of those books?!”
“I’m sorry, Mom...” I lifted up a heavy, sluggish hand to wipe away my tears.
With great effort, I slowly lifted my head and sat my burning hot body up before looking around the room to obtain as much information as possible, paying no heed to my hair sticking to my sweaty neck. The room had only a few dressers for storing things and two tables, apparently beds, each covered with filthy blankets. Sadly, there was no bookshelf in sight.
“I don’t see any books... Maybe this is just a nightmare? A death nightmare?” If a god had granted my wish and reincarnated me, there should have been books nearby. My wish was to keep reading books after being reborn, after all. While thinking things through with my feverish, foggy head, I stared at a spider’s nest hanging off the dark, soot-stained ceiling.
Soon, however, the door opened and a woman came in. Perhaps she heard me moving, or perhaps she heard me talking to myself. But, either way, she was a beautiful woman with a triangular bandanna tied on her head who looked to be in her upper-twenties. She had a lovely face, but she was dirty. So dirty that I would assume she was homeless if I saw her in the streets.
I don’t know who this woman is, but she really should wash her face and keep herself clean. She’s wasting her good looks.
“Myne, %&$#+@*+#%?”
“Hyaaah!” The moment I heard the woman’s incomprehensible speech, a mental dam burst and memories that were familiar, yet not my own, came rushing through. In the span of a few blinks, the accumulated years of memories belonging to the girl named Myne had crashed through my mind like a flood and beat against my brain, causing me to reflexively clasp my head in horror.
“Myne, are you okay?”
No, I’m not Myne! I wanted to protest, but I couldn’t. I was overwhelmed by the indescribable sensation of this strange, dirty room and these weak, small hands becoming familiar to me. I got goosebumps as the language I previously couldn’t understand became fully comprehensible.
The huge flood of information sent me into a panic, and everything I could see before me screamed one thing: You’re not Urano anymore. You’re Myne.
“Myne? Myne?” The woman called out to me, worried, but to me she was just a stranger. Or she should have been, but for some reason, it felt like I knew her. It even felt like I loved her.
The love felt gross and alien. It wasn’t my own. I couldn’t yet manage to obediently accept that the woman in front of me was my mother. As my repulsion and love ground against each other, the woman kept calling out my name. Myne.
“...Mom.”
When I looked up at this strange woman I had never met before and called her “Mom,” I ceased being Urano and became Myne.
“Are you okay? You look like you have a headache.”
I instinctively didn’t want to touch my mom, she who existed in my memories yet was someone I didn’t know, and so I fell back onto the stinky bed to avoid her outstretched hand. I then shut my eyes to fully shut off all visual stimulation. “...My head still hurts. I want to sleep.”
“Okay. Rest well, dear.”