He opened his eyes and quickly shut them due to the bright fluorescent lights directly overhead.

‘This must be the hospital, right?’

His head was pounding and his back was a little sore from where he lay. A quick touch of the ground told him he was on some sort of tile, it was cold, rigid, and quite dusty.

‘Gross, why am I on the floor? Was I drugged and kidnapped? I feel weak.’

He opened his eyes, this time slowly, and observed his surroundings. He was at… a supermarket? There was an aisle with canned goods behind him and packaged ramen in front of him. That was not the weirdest part though, he was in the midst of four or five kids, standing around him, aged maybe four to seven, whispering among themselves.

‘This is embarrassing, luckily there was nobody but children to see that I slipped and passed out in the grocery store.’

“Sorry guys, I’m oka-”

Why in the world did he sound like that? He sounded like a child. Did he scream as he fell, and lose his voice? Now that would be way too embarrassing.

“Hiro! What happened, are you alright?”

Finally, an adult was here. He looked up to see a short, round woman with a pleasant, motherly demeanor, who looked in her fifties.

“Hero? Did I catch a child that was falling or something? Sorry, I must've blacked out” he said sheepishly as he started to stand up while rubbing the back of his head.

“This is no time for jokes Hiro! You had me seriously worried you brat! I’m too old for these silly pranks, you're going to give me a heart attack. No treat for you this week!”

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

He deadpanned as he rose to full height, looking at this crazy woman, speechless. Hold on, this woman was tall, very tall. She looked short from the ground, how is she so tall yet so round?

“Hello? Earth to Hiro, don’t ignore me you brat!” The mountain of a woman said impatiently.

He, however, was preoccupied looking at the little girl to his left. Why was he the same height as her?

‘No… No… NO! Why am I a child? Is reincarnation a thing? Why? What year is it? Am I even reincarnated? Am I some science experiment? Where is my family?’

While he was preoccupied with his thoughts the woman had had enough. “Fine kid, no dinner either, since you wanna play that game,” she said as she turned around and started walking down the aisle. She turned and peeked out the corner of her eye to observe the kid as she walked, but he was still staring off into space with a dumbfounded look on his face. ‘Gotta hand it to him, he’s committed to the bit’. “C'mon kids we're not done shopping, make sure you pick out your treat.”

He, Hiro, he supposed, had finally calmed his nerves down to the point that he wasn't afraid of fainting.

“Aren’t you coming Hiro?” asked the girl to his left. She was skinny, had straight black hair in a bob cut that contrasted her piercing green eyes, and was wearing a white dress. She had lingered behind to make sure he was okay.

“What's your name?” Hiro said, completely ignoring her question.

“Umm it’s Emi, are you sure you’re okay?” she responded, looking concerned.

“Yup, sure thing bud, I’m gonna go take a leak, see ya,” he said dismissively as he turned and walked away, down the opposite end of the aisle where the others left.

Emi was left confused and irritated by Hiro. “Ew! That's so gross don’t tell me that!” She walked away and regrouped with the others.

Hiro, however, did not care. ‘Ugh, that doesn’t help me at all. I know Hiro kinda sounds Japanese, but Emi could be a Japanese or English name. Wait we are speaking English.’ He looked up at the sign hanging from the ceiling which read ‘canned goods’ in Japanese.

‘Good thing I took Japanese in school to fill some credits, never mind that tough, did I get Isekai’d?’ He, like many others, went down the rabbit hole of anime, then manga, then manwha, then light novels, and finally fanfiction. He took a little bit of offense to the possibility that he was Isekai’d. ‘Isn’t it always someone who was a loser in their past life who gets transported to another world?’ He didn’t feel that he was a loser in his past life but he was too anxious to focus on that at the moment.

“I need to figure out where I am for certain.” He said aloud as he stepped outside the grocery store.

“Welp, that'll do it,” He said as he looked in astonishment at the beautiful view of the mountainside with four faces carved upon it that put Mount Rushmore to shame.