Chapter 1

After passing through the tunnel... it was pitch black.

A famous line I had heard somewhere before flashed through my mind and disappeared... though it was a bit different.

When I woke up, it was pitch black.

Even though I had my eyes wide open, I couldn't see anything.

Night? Or had I been locked up somewhere?

Anyway, I had to figure out the situation.

When I tried to lift my arm, I noticed something was off.

My arm wouldn't move properly.

I tried to move my legs, but they wouldn't move either, even less than my arms.

What was going on here?

I tried to move other parts of my body and realized something even more serious.

I couldn't move my neck at all, or hardly at all.

I couldn't move my back much either.

But I wasn't in pain. If I had been injured, I should feel some pain... maybe I had been given a sedative?

My senses were unusually dull, so it might be a sedative.

Had I been injured and taken to the hospital... but why was I injured? An accident?

I tried to recall my memories.

The last thing I remembered was getting the light novel I had been looking forward to, staying up all night reading it, and then, when it was time to go to work, rubbing my sleepy eyes and driving to the office.

I could remember that much, but nothing more.

Had I fallen asleep at the wheel and caused an accident?

But if that was the case, I should be in the hospital, right? But I didn't smell the distinctive odor of hospital medicine, so what was this...?

*Click*

The sound of a doorknob turning.

I couldn't move my neck to change my field of vision, so I couldn't confirm.

But if someone had come in, they would explain the situation, so I tried to speak...

"ftgyふじこlp;@:"

...Huh?

My senses were unusually dull, but I could hear the voice clearly.

The problem was that I couldn't understand a word of it.

Suddenly, in the pitch-black darkness, I saw something white and misty.

Since I couldn't move my neck, I could only look at the ceiling, so I stared at the mist until it formed a round shape on the ceiling.

That's when my thoughts started moving again.

What was that? What was that mist... it looked like cotton candy and seemed delicious... no, it felt like it was flowing from the wall and fixed itself into a round shape on the ceiling, but was it moving? It seemed to be moving very subtly, or maybe it wasn't.

As I was thinking about it, I saw something else in my field of vision, a white, misty, distorted human-like shape.

I almost screamed when I saw it.

To be honest, I was quite shocked.

In 30 years of living, I had never seen anything like this.

The human-like shape was approaching from the direction of my feet.

Then I noticed another one in the opposite direction.

I hadn't noticed it before because I couldn't turn my head.

"wxrtyぼkl;":;;pp."

The distorted, misty human-like shapes were speaking in a language I couldn't understand.

At first, I was surprised, but the atmosphere they gave off was not frightening but rather nostalgic and warm, like the feeling of returning to a home I rarely visited.

The warm, nostalgic feeling grew stronger as if I was being embraced.

It was a feeling of comfort and a desire to entrust everything to them.

Then I realized I was being "picked up."

In an instant, several scenes played out in my mind.

After watching all the scenes, I, dressed in a judge's robe, shouted,

Choose!

The runner-up was "What a Strong Nurse."

It was a comedy and a tear-jerker, but it was too long to win the grand prize.

The grand prize winner was "If I Became a Baby Again."

It was a cliché yet dreamlike story where, at 30, I was tired of my boring life and, by launching an app on a magical smartphone, I turned into a baby.

Given the circumstantial evidence and the dream, it won the grand prize for being "just right."

I came to my senses the moment I was picked up and held in the chest of the human-like shape.

There were several of them, three large ones and two small ones.

Since they were misty human-like shapes, I couldn't tell their expressions at all.

I couldn't understand their words either.

But the word "Lilianne" was the only one that clearly echoed in my ears.

Is this my name?

But... Lilianne... that... no matter how you look at it, it's a girl's name, right?

I would be grateful for your feedback.

2/12 Minor corrections and revisions

3/9 Periods, spaces at the beginning of sentences, and ellipsis corrections

3/10 Prohibited character processing corrections

5/3 Typo corrections