My name is Iris.
I'm a 25-year-old eye doctor.
To be exact, I'm an optometrist, not an ophthalmologist.
I worked at an eye center located in one of the largest hospitals in the country.
I worked 6 days a week, 8-10 hours a day.
It is very exhausting and monotonous.
Everyday I wake up around 5 a.m. and leave for work at around 6 a.m. My work starts at 8 a.m. and ends around 5 or 6 p.m.
I usually see around 20 patients a day.
Sometimes even more than that.
There are five of us optometrists working, but still very exhausting. The eye center where I worked had ten ophthalmologists, each with a different specialty, plus a dozen or more nurses and other staff members. In one day, we all see well over 100 patients. To make our work a bit easier, we divide them among the five of us.
I usually do:
Visual acuity tests: which is to check how well you see at all distances.
Refraction tests: which is to find correct lens prescription for your eye problem.
Prescribe corrective lenses for your vision problem.
Proper referral to other eye specialists.
I love my work, but it is very draining since I have to interact with different kinds of patients.
Some are easy to talk to, while others are very difficult to understand.
Each patient is unique, so I have to adjust to each one to provide the right care.
At the end of each shift, I always rush home. I don't enjoy socializing since I'm already drained from talking at work.
Also, I'm in a hurry to go home because I want to binge-read some novels.
To be honest, I always daydream about being transmigrated to another world, maybe because I'm bored or don't have any dreams or goals so far.
I always watch adventure movies because they make me forget my monotonous life, even for a while.
Sometimes I imagine myself being the main character, trying to save the world and being the hero.
Or I could be the villain and try to destroy everyone.
Even being a side character or just a person in the background, just watching the events unfold.
To be honest , I always pay attention more to the side characters. Sure, the story isn't about them, but they influence the plot's flow, whether it's the "main character's former love" or the "villain's evil parent".
I'm used to being at the background. I don't enjoy being the center of attention, maybe because I'm not used to it.
I'm also happy doing my own thing and just going along with whatever everyone wants.
But this makes me feel kind of lost. I don't have any dreams or goals. I don't know who I really am and I don't know what my true character is.
So I just go along with the flow.
....
Sometimes I wonder how to be teleported to another dimension or universe, anything to get out of this monotonous life.
Would I panic? Or would I act like a main character?
I will definitely panic and I don't want to be the main character, the one who is the focus of the story or who decides how the world develops.
Also, how do I feed myself? How do I support myself?
All I know is how to treat a person's eyes or prescribe eyeglasses, which I don't think I've read in any novels that have an occupation like that.
I know how to cook, but what if their food is different from ours? How do I know which ones are edible?
Even worse, how do I talk to people? In the novels, people magically speak the common language, which I know is not realistically possible. Not to mention, what kind of people live there? Are they even human?
Ha, there's no way I would survive there.
To be honest, sometimes I have no common sense and I'm too shy for my own good.
And I'm too old. I mean, most of the stories I've read feature a main character who starts as a child or a teenager. Even if I'm not the main character, starting in another world at my age would be instant death.
I mean, just imagine, 25 years old and worse, you're a woman who speaks a strange language and doesn't know anyone.
Yeah, I probably end up as a prostitute, a slave or worse, burned at a stake for being a witch, thanks to my clothes and the way I talk.
There won't be anyone to "magically" save me, as who would save a weirdo?
Anyway, I'll just enjoy reading my growing collection of books and live my monotonous life until the day I die.
At least that's what I thought.