… Huh?! W-wait, urk, what just happened just now?

That dream … that pain, cold, darkness. Why would I have such a nightmare? Did I watch one or two too many of those horror flicks yesterday? Did I even watch them at all? I couldn’t remember … Actually, now that I thought about it, was I sleeping in the first place?

Argh, whatever. Let’s go to the kitchen and get a muffin or something sweet. Gotta reset my mental after that weird as …

… Why is everything still dark?

I blinked, or at least, I thought I was blinking. I felt my eyelids opening and closing but due to how dark everything was, I was starting to question myself. It felt like déjà vu, as if I was still having that nightmare. So I blinked harder, so hard that it irritated my eyes. Despite all my best efforts, there was still no light. How could it be completely dark?!

My phone!

If I was just asleep, then my phone had to be somewhere close by. I probably fell asleep listening to music and dropped my earbuds, but if I could just find my mobile, I’d be able to turn some light on.

Stretching my arms around, my stiff muscles began to complain. Still, what worried me most was how there was resistance when I tried to move them. Something liquidy was there. It slowed me down like walking underwater.

Once I raised my arms a bit more, the feeling of that warm liquid was replaced by a sense of freedom. When I tried to touch my hands, I felt something sticky and smooth on them, and as I tried to smell it, my head just flinched back from how weird it smelled.

… Please, don’t tell me that I had an accident in bed. That nightmare was scary enough, but it shouldn’t have made me wet myself, right?! It was just cleaned! The bed sheets smelled so good!

My arms reflexively slammed on my bed in frustration, only for some mysterious fluid to splash into my mouth. My gag effect activated for a second, but for some weird, insane reason, it actually tasted pretty good!

Is this sticky liquid yogurt?

That thought calmed me down. Maybe I spilled some yogurt when I fell asleep, but even if that were the case, Mama probably would scold me since Nanny just cleaned all the bed sheets in the apartment. And my muscle soreness probably came from my dance training, made even worse after laying on my arms when night came. Yeah, that seemed the most plausible!

I am under my bed sheets, definitely. I just have to pull them … what are my nails scratching?

I felt my nails touching something tough but soft. From the sound of it, it felt like scratching something leathery. I became curious about what it was, so I placed some strength into my hands, but it wouldn’t budge at all.

As my curiosity took over, my mind focused entirely on this surface, ignoring the other weird things happening around me. It was then that I felt something inside my chest moving through my arms into my hands. Something inside me, like a gut feeling, told me to continue scratching with this energy.

What is this feeling? It feels so weird but also nat—oops!

Preoccupied with that “feeling,” a cracking sound echoed inside my room. I couldn’t exactly see what was going on, but from the feeling around one of my fingers, I presume I had pierced through the wall, making a hole.

O-oh no, S-Scheiße!

As I slowly took my finger out, the continued cracking sounds told me I had to start accepting my fate that Papa would 100% scold me for breaking the wall … somehow, with my meager amounts of arm muscles. Oh man, waking up from a nightmare was already mentally taxing, but now I would have to listen to a demoralizing lecture. Woe to me.

As I was silently hoping that Papa wouldn’t be too harsh to me when I explained my situation to him, my eyes noticed that the wall I pierced was colored white … Which didn’t make sense as my room was blue.

Wait, hold on, color?!

Looking down, my eyes registered light coming out of the hole. As I reached out my hand in bewilderment, I began to hear popping and squishy sounds coming from below me.

What I saw down there was the reason why I felt it so hard to move around. I was swimming around in a warm, slimy, translucent fluid. It looked far too similar to snot. It was absolutely revolting, and I was inside it for some effing reason!

Why am I—Guff! Gack! Gack! Yuck! Ahhhh, why does this actually taste good? What the hell?!

More of the liquid splashed into my mouth when I tried to escape this slimy hell, motivating me through disgust to widen that hole. I banged my body against the wall but noticed nothing happening. The pain from ramming myself against it helped me calm myself down a bit, remembering how I managed to pierce a hole in the first place.

I took a deep breath, ignoring the slime around me for now. I placed my fingers on the edges of the hole and began imagining that power again. I breathed in and out, trying to find that sensation in my chest, and the moment I did, that gut feeling appeared again. It supported me, showing me how to let this energy course through my body.

I closed my eyes and called up all the strength in my arms before beginning to tear the wall down. Slowly but surely, the cracking became louder and louder before warmth slowly seeped inside the room. Even with my eyes closed, I could see light through them. It gave me the confidence to continue until I burst out of the room and was greeted by the comforting rays of the morning.

As I fell to the ground, the fluids gushed out with me, drenching not only me but everything else around me. I had a deep wish to get under a shower at this very instant.

Regardless, I stayed in this pool of “whatever liquid.” For I was currently enjoying a sunbath, so much so that I didn’t have the willpower to stand up.

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Whoooooew … did the sun always feel this great? Relaxing like this is, seriously, so dang good. Whooo—grk! Bleh! Not again; this damn liquid keeps getting in my mouth!

I forced myself up after that nasty surprise. The lethargy my body felt was gone, fully invigorated by enjoying the rays. Nevertheless, as nice as that was, the situation didn’t allow me to just rest at this point. After all, where was I at this moment?

Looking around, all I could see was green and brown, similar to Central Park, but also not. The trees towered over me; they were humongous, far taller than I remembered them being. The vibrant grass I was standing on was almost eye level, and a leaf fragment fell down from a gust of wind and landed softly on me, covering my head completely.

How?

With the sun rays showering the area, this whole place looked absolutely magical until I realized a leaf was able to cover up my entire line of sight. A single piece of leaf. Yeah, it sounded crazy since I was used to shaking off a single leaf from the top of my hair whenever I visited the park, so having such a thought was wild.

… No, no, forget about this. Y-yeah, maybe it was something like a palm leaf. Yeah, that makes sense! … But this looks like a forest … Nope, nope, forgotten all about it. Lalalalala.

My goal should be to find my parents. Yes, maybe I was stupid enough to fall asleep at a park after getting rejected again at an audition. I needed to give them a call and get back home immediately before they called the cops. The last thing I needed was somebody I knew seeing me covered in all this slime—that would be the worst!

I took a breath and began searching for my phone, only to immediately freeze up the moment I turned around.

… It’s an egg.

A broken egg, to be more specific. It was quite massive, too. I was not exaggerating. From my perspective, it was as large as a small house, and I could see a sizable hole in it. Looking at the eggshells mixed in with that weird liquid, the evidence of my actual situation was right under my nose.

Denial. I wanted to deny all of this. I was inside that thing? Ridiculous! Why would I willingly go into a giant egg for any reason? I had to forget about it. I needed to call my parents. I needed to go back home.

However, the surprises continued.

When I tried to run away from this place, I slipped on the mysterious liquid and fell on my stomach. Even more of that damn liquid—yolk, probably—entered my mouth, to the point that it felt like I drank a glass full.

I forcibly pushed myself back up but placed too much strength in them, tumbling over myself and landing on my back. And that was when I saw it.

A tail.

A black tail with shimmering, jet-black scales. When I raised my head, I saw this tail attached to my butt alongside two small legs eerily similar to lizard feet. None of them had bare, naked pink skin. No hint of any clothes, either. From my butt to my legs, all of them had the same glossy scales on the tail.

This should have been quite embarrassing. I mean, I was naked, inside a park. Until my eyes widened in the horror of my next thought.

Oh great, I thought I had stopped dreaming, but I guess this is part two. Hahahaha …

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Oh, come on, what the hell is this? First, I wake up in some giant egg in some park or whatever, and now I have a tail? With scales!? WHERE ARE MY CLOTHES? WHY AM I NAKED? WHAT IS GOING ON WITH ME?

I waddled in the mysterious fluid like a toddler giving a tantrum. At this point, I didn’t care how much of this fluid entered my stomach. I was going insane. I had to still be dreaming!

Okay, okay, I shouldn’t panic. This could all be in my head. Everything could be an illusion.

Breathing in deeply and then back out, I calmed myself down for a split second until I noticed that my “nails” were a bit longer than usual … and sharper.

… I need a mirror.

I jumped up. Every step I took felt awkward with these weird lizard feet, but I wasn’t slipping and tripping around anymore as I took it slow. It was progress, but progress I wished I hadn’t learned.

I looked at my surroundings, ignoring the absurdity of everything, just to find something that could reflect stuff. When I found a small puddle in the middle of this grassy place, I ran over there, trying my best to coordinate four legs.

Oh, right, have I mentioned I had four legs instead of two? Yeah, that warranted a mention, but I was screaming around so much that I found it unnecessary to repeat everything again. But in the depths of my soul, I was screaming. I was screaming nonstop for all of this to end.

Once there, I placed my head over the puddle of water, telling myself to be brave and just open my eyes. I reassured myself that it was all a dream and that this was probably just some cosplay or the sudden progression of VR to the point that everything felt real.

Okay, let’s get it over with … Why am I a lizard?

The image was unclear, but I could see a lizard’s face covered in black scales on it. There was no hair or outer ear, but I could see tiny knife-like teeth as I held my mouth agape from surprise. Yup, the hope I built up was once again destroyed.

“Kriiiiiiiah!”

Oh, just woooonderful. My panicked cries of absolute panic sounded exactly like the ones I heard lizards make during those animal documentaries. I could imagine it now, “Lizard wakes up to find out she’s a lizard and lets out a pathetic cry.” Ferocious. Brilliant title.

… The chance of this being a dream was now 100%, right? ‘cause if it weren’t, then this meant this wasn’t a dream, but reality. I wasn’t enjoying a peaceful sleep on my soft bed. This wasn’t a dream. This also couldn’t be VR … and with those options thrown out the window, the last one I had was—

Did I die?

NO! No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no! Stupid! Stupid thoughts!

Why the hell was that even a thought?! It was insane if you ask me! A sane person should not assume that she just died when something weird happens! That was just crazy, without any evidence.

… But what if it was the truth?

I did enjoy reading fiction, and some of those novels had portal fantasy or reincarnation into a new world as a theme. You die on Earth and were then reborn into an entirely new world, where you inherited your memories from your past life.

Dying and then being transferred into another world was absurd. It couldn’t be real. It was fiction for a reason. However, if I looked at it from that perspective, it would rationalize all the crazy stuff around me. The fact that I was a newborn lizard with all this information on reincarnation novels was kinda proof of this very idea.

But, then, how did I die? I couldn’t recall anything. My mind felt hazy as if I was missing something. If the thought of reincarnation should be put into consideration, then what about some mad scientist kidnapping me and turning me into a lizard from one of their experiments? It was equally crazy, but at least not morbid.

Hahahaha, ahhhhhhhhh! I screamed internally, this time so that I could avoid hearing that lizard-like scream again.

Either way, I needed to distract myself by doing something. Anything. I felt light-headed the more I thought about this, so I decided it was better not to build up even more stress by staying optimistic.

I did not die.

I had to stay composed. Whether this was a dream or not, the situation was dire. I had no phone, my parents weren’t around, nor my nanny, and I was immensely confused. I needed to assess my situation. Negativity would just cloud my judgment.

… That was when I heard something approaching from behind.

I turned around, noticing two individuals. Compared to the trees, they were around the size of small children but fully covered in fur. They each wore nothing but a loincloth and had a thick tree branch in their hands. They eyed me and began to drool.

“Grouu!” both growled with their fangs bared.

… I should probably run now.