“Hit me again, asshole,” I scream as I climb to my feet on a surge of anger-fueled adrenaline, one strap of my tank top tearing in two, falling open and leaving half my bra exposed to the people around us as I flash my middle finger at the man, my father, staggering as I struggle to tell up from down. A manic laugh parts my lips, jostling the fresh stream of hot tears pouring down my cheeks. I clutch at my stomach as my laughter is cut off by a violent coughing fit, sending blood spraying from my mouth to splatter across my black Converse and the pale concrete between us.

I laugh again, the sound falling from my lips like the rasp of a blade drawn from its sheath. Ichor still drips from my chin as my father's fist collides with my face, and amidst the pain and confusion, one thought breaks through the chaos, I should have stayed home and watched that new anime, damn it. It was supposed to be a good isekai for once. He's screaming, as he always has when angry, and the onlooking crowd gasps and shouts as my skull cracks open on the sidewalk, the concrete hot against my back.

The world spins, and I feel a warm wetness trickling from the side of my skull from what I think might be a hole. I struggle to move my hand to the side of my head where the blood keeps gushing, but it won't move, my whole body increasingly gripped by a cold, painful numbness as my vision fades.

They are the last things I hear as I die, the screams. A wheezing, almost robotic chuckle squeezes itself out of my throat with my last exhaled breath. Fucking finally, I think, and things go black, leaving me consumed by a sea of numb nothingness, my final thoughts a slew of frustration and self-doubt. Why did it end like this? Why couldn't either of us have changed? All I ever wanted was for him to love me, to feel less alone for once in my goddamn life, but all he ever loved was the idea of who he wanted me to be.

My body shudders once, a single breath escaping my lungs, then nothing. It's like being drowned in a sea of not-darkness, with no feeling, either physically or emotionally, and no thoughts whatsoever, not even a whisper.

Then, after an immeasurable time emerges from nothing, something, a fragment of sensation like sunlight breaking through a crumbling wall. There's a glimpse of thought, and slowly, feeling returns to my body, starting with a chill like death in my fingers and toes that climbs up my limbs, my torso, until I'm awash in a feeling of cold so deep I am undeniably alive, though the pain from the sodden frigid mass of sticks and stones digging into my back might be a better measure of my current status on the scale of living or dead.

The earthy scents of wet foliage and musty dirt fill my nose as I take in one slow breath, reveling in the sensation of living, birdsong, and insect chatter in my ears like an almost soothing symphony.

I have no idea how long I've laid there as my mind reconstitutes itself. Thoughts begin rumbling through my head, at first a confused jumble of shapes, colors, and half-formed images of my parents, my home, my cat, then, suddenly, it all comes crashing in like a tsunami, a torrent of memories carving themselves back into my mind. I open my eyes, blinking blearily at the sun hanging low in an overcast sky, peering down at me from between the sparse limbs of a thin canopy.

The chill air begins pricking my skin, and I shiver slightly. "What the hell?” I mutter as my mind begins to work again, the words coming horse and rough from my dry throat. Gingerly, I sit up, surprised and confused by the lack of pain and the excess of sensations from parts of my body that should be feeling nothing but pain.

Somehow, I'm in the middle of a forest straight out of a fucking fairy tale, trees with leaves of green, brown, red, and yellow rustling in the faintly whistling wind and trunks as thick as elephant legs with a haphazard arrangement of shrubs and wildflowers scatter beneath their boughs. Somewhere distant comes the thudding of a woodpecker at work, and here I am, sitting bare ass naked in a wet mess of dead leaves, sticks, and loamy earth, still struggling to think straight.

A twig snaps behind me, and I jerk away, leaping to my feet on reflex, heart racing in time with the fresh adrenaline coursing through my system, then momentarily distracted by the ease with which my body moves.

Leaves rustle somewhere nearby, and I jerk my head toward the sound, my eyes scanning the surroundings. But there's nothing more than a quivering bush in front of me. Probably just a squirrel or something, I tell myself, forcing deep breaths to calm my still-racing heart. My mind returns to the predicament at hand. Right, well, what now?

Now, if you’ve ever heard any of that search and rescue advice, they always tell you to stay where you are, maybe build shelter and find some food, but always to stay put since it’ll make you easier to find by search and rescue teams. I’ve heard of those things, as should be expected of a twenty-something trans woman, but I’m also me, by which I mean an idiot, so I don’t do that. No. Instead, I start walking, which is very unpleasant, shall we say, when you’re entirely naked without even a pair of shoes to pad your feet.

So, here I am, slowly picking my way through the wilderness, shouting, "Hello? Is anyone out there?" at the top of my lungs, hoping, but not praying, never praying, that someone would answer. But the forest remains eerily silent, my desperate cries swallowed by the vastness around me, leaving me filled with naught but overwhelming loneliness in the chilly evening.

I stumble upon a berry bush, some nuts, and even a few plump-looking insects that might go well with the isolation and depression, but hesitation and uncertainty keep me from sampling them. With a heavy heart, I continue my journey, plunging deeper into the woods until the sky grows dark and the sunlight fades, casting an orange hue between the trees.

“Fuck.”

Desperately drawing on all of my survival knowledge, primarily comprised of some survivor man I watched as a child, I gather as many large branches as I can find, which, surprisingly, is quite a few, and start building a very crude lean-to. I stand back minutes later, surveying the result of my efforts with some small satisfaction.

The lean-to I cobbled together looks more like a half-collapsed bush than a proper shelter, but it is, nonetheless, a shelter. Albeit one that smells of musty dirt and fresh-cut branches and has no comfortable resting space. A twinge of pride wells up within me, a tiny triumph amidst the chaos of my situation. Passingly, I wonder if this is how it was for the first humans, then shake myself. It’s a survival situation, I tell myself. There’s no time to sit around thinking about things that don’t matter.

Next, I try creating a fire but quickly give up when all I achieve is smashing my left thumb between two rocks, resulting in a lot of cursing, blood from a split fingernail, and a little crying. And so, I curl up and try to sleep in my little lean-to, the damp night air of the forest cold against my bare skin keeping me awake and shivering despite my best attempt.

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Isn’t this how people die of exposure?

My admittedly morbid thoughts are interrupted as a shadow passes over the entrance of my tiny shelter. My shivers still, every muscle tense as my mind races in step with my thundering heart. A shadow, dark and indistinct, passes over the entrance of my tiny shelter. My brain panics, and I wonder if there's something out in the darkness, hungry and ready to strike.

My breath catches, trapped in my constricted throat, as something audibly rubs itself against my tree, shaking the fragile lean-to. My thoughts spin with dread. Could it be a wolf, its hungry eyes fixed on me? Or a boar? Do those even eat people? Or perhaps a bear, its massive bulk ready to crush me?

A low rumbling huff of breath comes from just behind me, warm wetness lapping against my back from between the thin branches of my shelter, and I slowly reach out and take one of the two stones I’d been trying to use to start a fire, clutching it between my shaking hands.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fucking fuck.

Slowly I turn my head, trying to shift my weight without disturbing the sticks around me. Through the gaps in my lean-to’s wall, I glimpse mottled, matted white and gray fur and a slender, maybe canine, maybe feline, body. An involuntary whimper escapes my throat, but before an opportunity to scold myself for being so pathetic avails itself, the creature leaps into action, crashing through the lean-to in a deadly, whirling mass of teeth and claws that I can’t hope to track. Closing my eyes and letting out something between a screech and a bellow, I swing with the rock in both hands, somehow landing a blow on the animal with a hearty crunch of stone against bone.

Whatever the creature is, it lets out a low whimper, backing away a few steps, its emaciated form illuminated by the moonlight, foam bubbling from its mouth, eyes half glazed over as it twitches uncontrollably.

It's a wolf of some sort or at least the sad, degraded remnant of something that had been a wolf, the few remaining patches of its white and gray fur matted with muck, its skin stretched taught over its bones everywhere else, foam dripping from its mouth in thick, bubbly globs as it snarls at me.

Its appearance is the furthest thing from my mind, however, because, fuck me, the things fucking rabid. I’ve seen a rabid animal once before, a skunk that got into my stepmother's roses only to find itself on the wrong end of my father’s pellet rifle. It twitched and writhed and frothed at the mouth just the same as this wolf was doing now, but the skunk was a lot smaller and, by extension, a lot less fucking terrifying than this goddamned wolf.

I retreat further into my lean-to, my back pressing against the thick tree I’d used to brace the now half-collapsed shelter. The canine must have regained something akin to its courage as it witnessed my retreat because not a second after my back met wood, it pounces, once more a mess of gnashing death and spittle. I screech again, in turn, and swing with the rock, this time catching the poor animal under the jaw.

There is another crack, like branches burning in the fire, and the wolf crumples, paws scrabbling at the ground, its jaw hanging limp from its skull, guttural whimpers pouring out its throat alongside a mess of blood.

Frozen in nervousness, I stare at the dying creature, stone held in a white knuckle grip, my mind spinning, all but empty. What did I do? What should I do? Is it in pain? What do I do?

I know what I should do, at least somewhere deep in the still-functional bits of logic buried beneath the onslaught of panic I know.

But instead of doing that, I just sit, staring numbly, maybe even dumbly, at the wretched, dying thing in front of me. In some stories, this is where the hero loses the rest of the night and most of the next day to shock, but I'm no heroine. I'm just an average trans girl, so the shock wears off after a few minutes, and I slam the stone into the wolf’s skull, crushing the animal’s brain without mercy, my jaw held shut so tightly that my teeth grind against one another with painful pressure.

The wolf twitches once, twice, then it's done. The meager scraps of life and animation fleeing from its wrecked and withered form left me shaken and vaguely nauseous. I don’t throw up. I don’t cry. I don’t scream. I walk away, my feet carrying me mechanically away from the ruin of my simple shelter as I stumble over roots and bushes, barely aware of the sticks and stones tearing away at my feet.

The forest swallows me whole, the towering trees blanketing me in protective darkness, only for something bright to appear right in front of my face, nearly scaring the shit out of me.

***

=System Log=

* You have slain [1] [Rabid Wolf] Level [2]

* You receive [360] experience

* Congratulations! You have reached level [1]

* You have [1] unspent skill point

* You have [1] unspent ability point

***

I stare dumbly at the wall of text that appears in my vision and fucking curse as if I’ve never cursed before because I finally understand what's happened to me. I’ve been fucking isekaid. I stomp at the ground, pull at my hair, and grumble at everything around me. “Fuck,” I scream at the top of my lungs as the sun begins to crest the horizon.

Breathing heavily and leaning against a tree, watching the sun rise slowly above the treeline, bathing the forest in welcoming, warm light. I sigh, slumping against the tree’s trunk, tears finally scrolling down my cheeks as I let out a crazed, disbelieving laugh. I close my eyes, hoping that this is all just some crazy dream my brain cooked up after spending too much time watching anime on my laptop back in my room.

“Excuse me. Uh, miss. Are you alright?”

I jerk awake at the voice and whirl to face the stranger garbed in brown homespun. A man, mid-twenties probably, with more beard than brawn and an unstrung bow hanging over one shoulder, a trio of rabbits slung over the other. My heart races, a mix of relief and apprehension coursing through my veins.

“Excuse me?” I say on reflex, then remember that I’m completely naked in the middle of nowhere and feel my face burn. I step back and instinctively try to cover myself with my hands.

The man’s mouth forms an ‘oh.’ He quickly slings off his thick cloak and hands it to me, glancing away. Scarlet touches his cheeks to match my blush, which oddly makes me suddenly feel more comfortable, but only a little. I take it with a rushed “thank you.” and wrap it around myself. The wool is scratchy and uncomfortable, but it's infinitely better than being nude.

“I… I’m sorry,” I say, desperate to regain some composure. “I’m not usually quite this much of a mess.”

“What?” He says, turning back to face me, a slight smirk dancing about his mouth. “You’re telling me you don’t often go out into the woods naked as the day you were born and pass out against a tree?”

The blush returns in full to my face, and the man laughs. “I’m sorry,” he says, holding a hand in my direction. I take it, my hand pausing over his for a moment with some slight hesitation before I do so, and he pulls me to my feet. “Names Hen. Hendrick Harrenswood, in full, but everyone just calls me Hen,” he says, and his baritone voice is warm and soothing at the same time. “You look like you could use some help.”

“Jen,” I say, straightening the cloak to more comfortably cover myself while letting a genuine smile or relief touch my lips. “And I guess you could say that. I got a bit lost, it seems.”

My smile is almost painful, my words barely scratching the surface of my desperate need. My stomach twists and growls, aching for anything to eat, and I want somewhere safe to finally get some sleep. Really, I just want someone to guide me out of this bewildering nightmare. The thought that this stranger might offer me all those things feels like a chance I can't afford to ignore.

“Not a worry, Jen. Hows about you come with me back to my cottage, and we get some food in you. No doubt you’re starving.”

“That sounds wonderful,” I say, unable to hide the desperate tone in my voice. Hen just smiles.

“Well then,” he says, smiling as he turns to lead the way. “Let us not waste any more time.”