Must Kill... Demons...
The forest was still ringing with the echo of Subaru's—no, her—scream. It bounced between the trees, fading into the distance like the cry of something wounded. Her hands trembled where they clutched her skirt, knuckles white, breath stuttering in shallow, uneven gasps.
"No. No, no, no, no, no."
Her voice came out in that same high, lilting tone, like someone else was speaking through her mouth. She slapped her throat as if she could force the sound back into something familiar. "This—this isn't my voice! Stop it! Stop sounding like that!"
She coughed, desperate, trying to speak deeper. "Ah—hah—uh—" It only came out squeaky.
Panic crawled up her spine, cold and sharp. Her chest rose and fell too fast, lungs unable to keep up. Every breath made her dizzy, every inhale louder in her ears than the last. She stumbled backward until her heel caught on a root and she collapsed to her knees.
"No, no, no! It's just a dream! It's a prank! It's some weird… VR thing! It has to be!"
Her hands shook as she grabbed her horns again, pressing down, hoping they'd come off like props. They didn't. The pressure only made her wince.
She stared at her fingers, delicate and pale. Her nails glinted faintly in the moonlight. Even they looked wrong.
Her chest tightened. Her breath caught halfway out. "This can't—this can't be real. I was just at the store! I was just—!"
Her voice broke. She clawed at the frilly neckline of the dress, pulling until the fabric bit into her fingers. The lace scratched her skin, but she didn't care. She wanted to tear it off, to see if maybe her real body was hidden underneath, like a costume she could peel away.
Nothing. Just more smooth skin and the wrong curves beneath.
Her throat let out a strangled noise—half laugh, half sob. "I'm… I'm not even me anymore…"
The words didn't sound right in her mouth. She squeezed her head between her hands, pressing so hard it hurt, as if she could crush the confusion out of her skull. "Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up!"
No alarm. No sunlight. Just the chirp of night insects and the hum of wind.
"Damn it!" She slammed her fists into the ground. The dirt gave beneath her, soft and cold. Her fingers dug deep until soil packed beneath her nails. She dragged them across the earth in frustration, tearing lines through the moss. "Why… why me?! Who did this?!"
Tears burned her eyes, hot and furious, but she refused to let them fall. She pressed the back of her hand against her face, trying to wipe away the tremor in her lips. Her breathing came faster again, every inhale sharp and ragged.
The forest spun. She felt sick.
She wanted to scream again, but even that took too much effort. Her throat ached from the earlier outburst.
Her body trembled with each uneven breath until finally, she just collapsed backward, the axe slipping from her grasp and landing beside her with a soft thud.
The world swayed above her.
The sky stretched endlessly, filled with alien constellations that twinkled like mocking eyes. None of them were the stars she knew. The Big Dipper, Orion, all gone. Replaced by strange clusters and lines that spelled out a universe that had never once seen her face.
Her chest rose and fell slowly now, exhaustion replacing panic. Her hands lay limp beside her, streaked with dirt. The night breeze brushed her hair, cool against her tear-wet cheeks.
She stared at the stars for what felt like forever, her eyes unfocused.
It wasn't just a change of scenery. It wasn't just another world.
Her voice was gone. Her body was gone. Her gender. Her species. Everything.
A low, breathless laugh escaped her lips. It wasn't joy. It was disbelief, the hollow kind that came when reality had gone too far for the mind to follow.
"…Who… did this to me?" she whispered.
The forest didn't answer.
Only the leaves whispered back, and the stars kept on shining—strange, distant, and utterly indifferent.
The moon looked too calm for the mess of feelings boiling inside her. Subaru let out a sound that was half sob, half laugh, and curled inward until she could feel the cool earth press against her back. Dirt clung to her dress, to the stockings, to the skin of her hands. Her shoulders shook.
"I don't want this," she whispered, though the word felt foreign in her mouth. "I don't want boobs, I don't want a cute face, I don't want—any of this. I want my stupid flat chest back. Give me back my weenie! Give me Subaru Jr. back! I want—" Her voice broke. The rest dissolved into a ragged cry.
Images she loved—her mother's cooking, her dad's annoying jokes, that cramped little room she slept in—flashed behind her eyelids like a movie trailer. The ache for them clawed up her throat and turned into fresh, hot tears. "I want to go home," she said, small and raw. "I didn't ask for this. I didn't ask for horns or a dress or… or whatever this is."
She hugged her knees close, trying to make herself smaller, to hide from the world and the new body that felt like a stranger's. The axe lay a little distance away, half-buried in moss. For a moment she let herself sink into the grief, letting it roll over her like a tide. Her breaths were shallow, her limbs heavy.
Then, quick and sharp as a slap, she smacked the side of her face with the heel of her hand. The sound cracked in the quiet night. "Wake up, you idiot," she hissed. "There's no time for sitting around crying. Crying won't fix this. Crying won't hand you back your—" Her lips twisted. She couldn't get the word out cleanly. "—your man bits."
Her palm lingered against her cheek. Tears dried and came back in new lines. She rubbed at her face until the stinging made her focus. The world narrowed down to the moon, the trees, the little patch of ground beneath her. The panic still threatened, but the slap had done its job: thought by thought, she shoved the worst of it into a corner and put a lid on it for now.
"Okay," she said aloud, the voice small but steadier. "No time to waste. Wallow later." She tried to make herself sound confident and found it sounded more like a half-baked promise. "For now—shelter. Food. Sleep. Questions come after."
She forced herself up. The motion felt odd. Her center of gravity was all wrong—her hips, her chest, the balance of weight that used to be familiar were rearranged like furniture in a house she didn't recognize. She swayed once, then gripped a low branch to steady herself. The dress flared when she moved; the stockings squeaked faintly where fabric rubbed fabric. Her chest had no support—no old comfortable armor of flatness—and the feeling of loose skin and movement made her stomach churn.
"My entire center of gravity is different," she mumbled, more to herself than anyone. She tested a step, then another. "Is there nothing supporting my chest? Ugh." Her fingers fluttered at the neckline for a second, awkward and protective, then she shoved them deep into her pockets—if the dress had pockets, they were just big enough. The action felt childish and brought a ridiculous little heat of embarrassment to her cheeks.
She walked to the axe, every step measured, and picked it up again. The handle fit into her hands like it belonged here—like it had always belonged here—and that tiny, ridiculous consolation made her snort. She dusted moss from the blade with the back of her hand. Dirt flecked her nails. Her movements were clumsy but practiced; she'd done worse with less experience.
"There," she said, standing up straight even though the posture felt strange. "See? Not dead. Can still hold an axe. I can still hit things. That's—useful." She glared at the trees as if the pines had ears and would be ashamed of themselves for conspiring. "I'll deal with the rest later. Pronouns, identity, fashion choices—all of it. Later."
Her voice wobbled once, then gained a rasp of brittle humor. "Even mentally calling myself 'she' makes me sick," she admitted to the silent forest. She picked at a loose thread on the hem as though it might be a leash to pull her back to normal. "But whatever. I'll cope. I'll be a… temporary she. Temporary Subaru. Temporary horned thing. Temporary frilly hat—whatever."
She tested the axe a few times against a low stump. The effort made a pleasant clunking sound and turned her anger into motion. Anger was easier to manage than panic, cleaner somehow. It gave her a target other than the impossible emptiness where her old life used to be.
"I swear," she muttered, breath cold in the night. Her eyes flashed up to the stars—foreign constellations glittering like someone else's roadmap. "Whoever did this—whoever plucked me out of my world and glued all this on me—I will make you pay. If you're some prankster demon, a witch, a pissed-off spirit, some immortal bird—" Her lip curled. "Even if you're a immortal phoenix or whatever, I'll find you."
She had to laugh at how ridiculous she sounded, and the laugh was a tiny, ugly thing, but it helped. She swiped at her cheeks again, gathering herself into a shape she recognized. She pushed the sleeves up a little, revealing forearms that looked more like hers than anything else. Dirt smudged the skin. That, at least, felt honest.
"First things first," she told herself. "Find shelter. Don't freeze. Don't get eaten by a bear or befriend a talking frog or some nonsense." The list in her head was a mess of fears and small plans: start a fire, check for food, find water, keep the axe handy, don't trust anyone who calls her 'cute' without permission. She blinked when the last one floated up, suddenly very wary of kindness.
She took a breath that was more determined than calm. The trees seemed to lean in, listening. A breeze played with her twin tails and teased the horns. For a flash, for a single heartbeat, the absurdity of the image—Subaru with horns, in a frilly dress, clutching an axe like a very confused lumberjack—hit her, and she couldn't help but let out a small, incredulous bark of laughter.
"Fine," she said, mouth full of moss-scented air. "You win, weird universe. But this isn't the end. Not for me." She shouldered the axe like a soldier and started walking, boots barely making noise on the soft soil. With each step she felt a hairline of resolve harden into something like a plan.
"I'll sleep somewhere safe tonight," she murmured into the dark. "And tomorrow? Tomorrow I start hunting answers. If it's a demon, a witch, or an immortal chicken, I'll drag them out by their feathers."
Her breath steamed in the night as she moved. Tears still promised to come at odd moments, and the ache for home sat like a rock in her chest, but she had traded the sharp, cliff-edge panic for a duller, steadier thing: fierce, stubborn purpose.
"Whoever did this," she said one last time to the empty trees, to the indifferent stars, to the moon that looked like it had seen stranger things and didn't care, "you messed with the wrong Subaru."
The forest didn't change much no matter how far Subaru walked. Trees, endless trees, gnarled and ancient, their branches tangled like old spider webs. The air was thick with damp moss and the faint smell of pine, her boots squishing softly over the soil. Every now and then she'd stop to listen—maybe a river, a campfire, a monster grunt—but nothing came. Only her own breathing filled the silence.
She sighed, dragging her axe behind her, the blade cutting shallow trails through the dirt.
"Nothing. Not even a stupid slime." Her voice echoed faintly, swallowed by the trees. "What kind of fantasy world doesn't even have tutorial mobs?"
Hunger gnawed faintly at her stomach. Her arms felt heavy. She considered sitting down but quickly shook the thought away. She'd been walking for what felt like hours—still no signs of people, roads, or even smoke. Not even animal prints.
"Great. I'm the main character of 'Lost: Forest Edition.'" She exhaled sharply, tilting her head back to glare at the foreign stars. "I swear, if this is some kind of purgatory, I'm suing someone."
She was about to drop onto a mossy rock and give up for a bit when something red flickered in her peripheral vision.
Her steps slowed.
There, between the roots of an old oak lay a shape.
Her breath hitched. "...Wait."
A boy.
He was sprawled on the ground, face half-hidden by dirt and blood. His red hair glowed faintly under the moonlight, sticky with dried blood. His jacket—dark crimson with torn sleeves—was soaked through. He looked young, maybe her age, maybe younger. Black pants, heavy boots, and beside him, an axe.
An axe like hers.
"Oh crap…" Subaru's eyes widened. "No way. He must be—he must be the teammate of this body's original owner! Or… or maybe another victim of this cosmic joke."
She didn't waste time thinking. She rushed toward him, kneeling beside his body, the skirt brushing against mud and leaves. "Hey, hey! You're bleeding!" She paused and groaned. "Ugh, of course you're bleeding, what kind of dumb talk is that…"
Her eyes darted over him—no obvious bandages, no signs of life except the faint rise and fall of his chest. "Uh… right, healing! Every fantasy world has healing spells, right?"
She lifted her hand above him dramatically.
"Heal!"
Nothing happened.
"Okay, okay, maybe it's about conviction or something." She frowned harder. "Heal!"
Still nothing.
"Damn it!" Her voice cracked. "What kind of cheap system is this?! I can't even heal my own—"
She stopped when she heard a faint sound escape his lips.
Her head snapped down. "Huh? What are you saying?" She leaned closer, tilting her ear toward his mouth. "Come again? I can't hear—"
Shink.
Something cold sliced through the air by her neck.
Her breath caught.
For a second, the world seemed to lose gravity. The forest twisted. Her stomach floated. She was—weightless?
Her eyes fluttered open.
She was standing.
Still standing. A few meters away from where she had just knelt. The boy still lay there, bleeding, unmoving.
"What… what the hell?" she whispered. Her fingers brushed her neck instinctively—no blood, no cut. Just smooth skin and a faint chill.
Was that… a vision? A hallucination? Her heart pounded in her chest.
"Okay… okay, not freaking out again." She took a shaky breath. "Maybe I'm just tired. Yeah. That's it. Sleep deprivation and trauma equals—hallucinations. Great. Totally normal."
She gripped the axe tighter and stepped forward again. The boy hadn't moved. The same dirt, the same smell of blood.
She knelt, cautious this time, voice trembling but determined. "Hey, hey! You're bleeding… yeah, I know, déjà vu. Ugh, this feels way too familiar."
Her voice faltered. "Do I have healing powers? Heal! Still nothing? Okay, cool, game hates me."
She frowned and leaned closer once more, trying to catch whatever mumble came from his lips.
But this time, something shifted.
The boy's fingers twitched. His body stirred.
Her eyes widened as he suddenly crouched up, barely standing, blood dripping from his chin. In his trembling hand was his axe—raised, ready to strike.
"What the—hey! What are you doing?!" Subaru yelped, jumping back instinctively.
She leaped a full meter—holy crap, she could jump like that?! Her boots skidded against dirt as she stumbled to steady herself.
The boy's eyes locked onto her. They were cloudy, half-mad, but full of hate.
"…demon…" he rasped, voice shredded from blood and rage. "Must… kill you…"
Subaru froze, staring, mouth dry.
What? Demon? Her?
Her grip on the axe tightened.
Was this… her first quest?
The boy lunged.
To Be Continued