episode_0000

It seems like I’ve been unconscious for quite a while.

When I opened my eyes, an unfamiliar ceiling unfolded before me.

It was an old wooden ceiling. There were small holes here and there, as if something had nibbled on it, and cobwebs were thick in the corners of the ceiling.

It didn’t seem like a hospital.

If I had collapsed due to a stroke, it would have been a serious situation, and I would have been taken to a hospital by an ambulance to treat the stroke. And if it was a hospital with that level of facilities, it would naturally be a somewhat large hospital, and if it was a large hospital, it wouldn’t have been so poorly maintained.

No, rather, it would be more difficult to find a wooden house like this in the heart of Seoul.

After staring blankly for a while, I sat up.

Creak, and I heard a faint squeak from the bed I was lying on.

My body felt light.

Well… excessively light.

There seemed to be no herniated disc from looking down at the cheap monitor with an unadjustable height every day, and there seemed to be no chronic back pain from the awkward posture.

When I stretched my arms out, my shoulders didn’t crack, and my vision was clear even without glasses.

…Yes, my body feels light. As if I’ve become 25 years younger.

The problem is, if I were 25 years younger, I would be five years old.

My vision was incredibly low. My body was thin, and my arms and legs were endlessly short to be considered an adult.

My hair was long and flowing down to my hips. When I grabbed it, it was black hair that didn’t match this place, glistening with moisture.

The hands that I saw were not the hands of a man approaching middle age in his early thirties, but very small, delicate, pale hands.

“Ah, ah.”

I made a sound for no reason.

I wasn’t sure if it was a girl’s voice or a boy’s voice because it was too young, but at least it wasn’t a rough voice that had been through alcohol and cigarettes.

When I turned my gaze, there were young children gathered around my bed.

Their faces were dirty and they all looked thin as if they hadn’t eaten properly. Wearing oversized and worn-out shirts that could almost pass for dresses, they stared at me with their mouths open.

“….”

“….”

We stared at each other in silence for a while, unsure of what to say.

“Who are you?”

Finally, the tallest boy among the children surrounding me, who looked like a leader, spoke.

The language that came out of his mouth seemed to be English.

Of course, the words were easy enough for me to understand, but… for some reason, it felt different from when I usually heard English.

No, rather, is it really English?

It felt somewhat different from English.

“….”

Whether I understood what he said or not, I didn’t know how to respond.

*

At first, I thought I had come to England during the Industrial Revolution.

Why not? Suddenly waking up and finding yourself in a different time and place… the setting of those alternate history stories where someone is possessed by someone else from a different era. I wasn’t really knowledgeable about history, but I had read some of those alternate history novels from time to time. Reading web novels was the best way to pass the time during my commute.

I didn’t discriminate by genre and read on various sites. Whether it was a subscription or free chapter, if it was interesting, I would follow along steadily, so I had a rough sense of the era even though I couldn’t claim to have proper historical knowledge.

When I saw the people’s attire and the gloomy atmosphere of the alley, it was the Victorian era when Jack the Ripper roamed the alleys!

…that thought completely shattered when I passed through the alley two days after waking up in this world and saw the flying battleship.

It was a strange-looking battleship that seemed to be floating in the air as if it were a battleship on the sea turned upside down. The battleship, propelled by a steam engine, left a trail of black smoke as it flew, unbelievably large, with the bridge and cannons of a battleship upside down under a huge airship. With a wooden deck, it really felt like looking down from above at a battleship on the sea.

In reality, that battleship was looking down at us from above.

In reality, it was an unbelievable sight. Even if it was a airship filled with hydrogen or helium, it couldn’t fly carrying such a heavy weight. Even if it could barely fly, it would be impossible to actually use the cannons. The moment they fired, they would lose their center of gravity due to the recoil.

However, that battleship, flying alongside biplanes as if escorting it, or should I say, forming a fleet, with a large presence, confidently strolled through the sky.

And after seeing that battleship flying out of the window, I knew exactly what world I had come into.

I hadn’t entered the web novel I was reading. Well, I haven’t even left a comment, so there’s no way I’d get caught.

This world was not a web novel but a world in a game.

A JRPG series that I had been playing steadily for the past 7 years.

A game that was based on the British Industrial Revolution era, infused with steampunk, and had a unique feel of Japanese subculture, attracting enthusiastic followers from the otaku community.

It was clear that it was a work from the [Azeruna Chronicles] series of the Millennium Corporation.

*

The Millennium Corporation is a small company based in Osaka, Japan. With a staff of about 40, their games often receive criticism from users for having outdated graphics and poor optimization, with comments like ‘it looks like graphics from the previous generation of consoles.’

It’s not that they haven’t progressed at all, but their progress is slow. In fact, compared to games released by other Japanese game companies around the same time, the graphic technology of the Millennium Corporation was objectively mediocre.

But that’s a story told by people who don’t play games.

Fans of the series are grateful for the release of a new game every year. In fact, the game wasn’t that popular, as it wasn’t even released in Korean just five years ago.

The series has a history of about 20 years. In the early days, the game was released for PC, but after suffering significant losses due to illegal copying, it moved to portable game consoles, then returned to home consoles, and now it is also available for PC.

By adapting past works to modern consoles or re-releasing them for PC, they have been consistently attracting new users, and despite some technical shortcomings, the series continues to attract new users who are fascinated by its unique atmosphere.

I have been purchasing and playing the new series diligently for about 7 years, as recommended by a friend.

And following the rule that those who start later get more deeply involved, my friend, who later started, went to the extent of importing the game from a Japanese online shop, playing the Japanese version before the Korean version was released, and serializing the strategy on a blog, and by the time they realized it, they were already deeply immersed in the game.

The history of the series spans 20 years, but the worldviews within the series are diverse. From Part 1 to Part 5, Part 6 to Part 8, Part 9 to Part 13, and everything after Part 14, each game has a completely different worldview. It’s easier to think of it as periodically rebooting while keeping the basic system intact. Thanks to this, even though the series has been going on for a whopping 20 years, it’s not particularly difficult for newcomers to get into.

And the emotional impact of following the grand finale in real-time is quite something.

Perhaps that’s why I was able to get so immersed in the game seven years ago.

“……”

Well, that’s just how it is.

The problem is how I, not even Japanese, ended up in the midst of a Japanese game.

I’ve published walkthroughs on my blog, criticized weak plot twists, and repetitive event scripts, and even deleted posts after realizing that what I mocked as a setting error was actually a setup. I’ve also lashed out on online forums because I didn’t like a particular character.

……

Well, I mean, it’s not like I have no corner to hide in, but it’s unlikely that a game company in Japan would be watching everything. And it’s not like the game is even being released directly; it’s being imported through a distributor.

……

Well, thinking about it now, it probably doesn’t matter.

The most important thing is what role I’ve been reincarnated into in this world. And on top of that, I’ve been reborn as a girl.

Given the nature of the world, the orphanage may not be the best place, but still, well, as long as I’m not in a place like a workhouse, I might be able to live relatively comfortably. If I’m lucky, I might even be adopted into a childless noble family.

“Sylvia!”

As I looked up at the almost-familiar battleship, I heard an irritated voice.

A skinny old man was approaching me. He was holding a roughly carved wooden cane in his hand, and although his back was hunched, the stubbornness on his face was so evident that he looked rather spirited.

By the way, Sylvia is the name I acquired after coming to this world. My last name is Black.

Originally, I wasn’t even at the orphanage, but two days ago, I suddenly appeared and found my name on the list.

I wanted to ask the orphanage owner, who was annoyed, where he had been hiding, but I held back because I had just seen the old man hitting a child with a cane.

If I were a 30-year-old adult, I could have given this old man a piece of my mind, but now I was just a five-year-old child.

“Yes.”

I answered as quietly as possible and turned towards the old man.

“A new child has arrived. Take care of them.”

Me? Take care of them?

I barely managed to hold back those words.

My dislike for children is not worth considering here. After all, I was once a child myself.

Normally, the head of the orphanage would have taken care of the new child until yesterday, but unfortunately, a seemingly kind couple adopted the child last night.

“Look, I’m different from the likes of you!”

I took the place of the child who left, laughing at us.

“Now that you’re the oldest here, you should be able to do something, especially since you’ve been hiding in the shadows for so long.”

That was the reason.

I nodded quietly, not wanting to rebel against the old man who always smelled of alcohol, knowing that I would just get in trouble.

Following the old man, I went down to the first-floor reception room, where, like the orphan boys, there was a mischievous child waiting.

However, despite such a messy appearance, I could clearly tell who the child was because of their white skin that could be seen distinctly and their thick, lush, dark blue hair that reminded me of the sea.

“Starting today, they call me Claire. Take care of me.”

Or else, I’ll hit you.

There seemed to be such a message hidden behind.

The child, who looked at me with shy, squinted eyes, awkwardly smiled when our eyes met.

… And the moment I saw that child, my mind went blank.

Claire Pangeleforn.

Both in appearance and name. Just like the Claire Pangeleforn in my head.

Of course, they probably don’t have the surname Pangeleforn now.

… And, at least in the ‘orphanage,’ they were a character I definitely did not want to meet.