Work Text:
'What happened...?'
His head was spinning. His body was numb.
There had been an impact.
He was lying face down on concrete, its roughness digging into his cheek.
There had been a flash of light, and a terribly loud screeching of tyres. Something massive...had hit him.
It was a truck.
His eyes were functioning poorly, his vision filled with spots and patches of darkness. There was no pain, but a sense of disorientation and fright. His heart was beating oddly slowly.
The chest was expanding and contracting in short bursts. Eyes, nose and mouth dripping liquids of all kinds. The body felt strange and difficult to move. Subaru's heart rate began to grow stronger at an unbearable speed, with a headache almost in sync with the pounding of his heart that grew from a throb in his temple.
A weak series of sobs were escaping his mouth. The body was still numb, but the rough texture of the street was a constant on his cheek. It was all he could think about. All of the remaining thought processes were sluggish as if trying to catch smoke. If he focused a bit too much on one thought process, they would burst free from his palms. His ears were ringing.
A few conjectures had been made, as Natsuki Subaru silently observed the growth of a red puddle from the corner of his poorly functioning eyes.
He had been hit by a truck.
He had fallen to the ground.
He was sobbing uncontrollably and almost automatically.
The street was uncomfortably rough to his cheek.
There was...something red, something uncomfortably sticky under him. A plastic bag with snacks lied in front of him, it's contents spilled out. The acrid scent of dried natto was suffused with a thick and unbearable smell of iron. Subaru's throat convulsed, and his throat burned harshly with the sensation of bile. His vision had almost gone completely dark and the headache had devolved into an extreme pain.
'...this is all my blood? Why is there so much? Wow, it's spilling like crazy...'
Subaru realized that one of his arms that was splayed out before his eyes was twisted the wrong way. Another heavy round convulsing followed, and harsh bile escaped through his mouth. His nose was overwhelmed by the foul smells.
'What the hell is going on...? I was hit by a truck...'
Faint clatters of multiple footsteps approached him.
"-losing blood!"
"Hospital...!"
Jostling and further disorientation. Subaru's vision had gone entirely dark, with only snippets of bright lights and whispers of dying sounds were detected by him. His brain was sluggish as ever.
'Mom...I don't understand anything...why was there so much blood...?'
His body was losing sensation.
The sounds were growing fainter and his eyes had gone completely dark. As the last of the sensation of touch faded away...Subaru's heart calmed and his breath relaxed.
It was quiet now.
His heart continued to calm further and his breath grew fainter. Subaru was sleepy, and it was as if he was in the comfiest bed in the world.
His vision hazed into a low white.
At that moment, Natsuki Subaru lost his life.
===
There was a river.
The skies were white. Everything was covered in an unusual fog that obscured all of the surroundings.
There was a small boat in the river. Its wood was grey ash in color and the boat's features were fine and simple. It moved through the perfectly still river with a sedate pace and only the slightest of ripples, as if afraid to disturb the river more than necessary.
Atop the boat was a coffin. Besides the coffin was a feminine figure. She gazed listlessly in the front, sparing not a glance at the coffin behind her. The female figure was dressed in a vaguely mournful attire, black in colour. Her face was concealed by a veil, but it couldn't hide the bright red locks of beautiful hair spilling from her back.
Inside the pale and simple marble coffin lay a male, atop a bed of flowers. They were spider lilies, but pale white in color.
His eyes were closed. His face was soft and lightly feminine, innocent and free of troubles. His black hair had been swept back meticulously. It was not an exceedingly beautiful face, nor was it particularly ugly.
There was no sound besides the faint sounds of water, rippling in accordance with the slow rocking of the boat.
The male was dressed in a cheap, athletic-themed outfit. It consisted of tracksuit bottoms and a zipped-up white tracksuit jacket, accented with orange stripes and branded with a symbol reminiscent of the letter 'N'.
An exceedingly unrefined attire, that did a disservice to the sombre skies and the elegantly dressed lady who gazed at the horizon nonchalantly.
The lady glanced back at the coffin in exasperation, as if waiting for the boy to wake up. She observed his unmoving form for a few moments, then shaking her head, resumed her observation of nothing in particular.
The one in the coffin stirred. The boat stilled uncomfortably.
His eyelids fluttered.
The fog increased in intensity.
Skies grew brighter.
The eyelids stilled their hesitant movements, as if in deliberation.
Natsuki Subaru opened his eyes.
===
"Master-sama! Wake up, Master-sama!!! Did you hit your head on the urinal again?"
"What the hell's with that diagnosis!?" Natsuki Subaru yelled, as the voice fully roused him from unconsciousness. His voice was strangely high-pitched, besides the throat being painful to use.
"You did, didn't you! I knew it! Master-sama, please don't keep hitting your head on that thing! If you want, you can just go in the corner or something!"
It was a mischievous voice. The voice waxed and waned in an empty-headed manner, with the tone of a person who committed their entire being to their air-headed speech. It was feminine, and with words drawn out and affectated in a combination of humor and idiocy.
Subaru's world was still spinning, and his body was aching all over. But he spied a heavy green around him, marred by the presence of a figure standing in the middle. This blurry figure was standing worriedly over him in an exaggerated manner, their back ramrod straight, but bent at an angle that brought their face as close as possible to Subaru's without touching. Their arms were wrapped around their torso, and the slender and long legs were perched on their toes.
Subaru moved his face in annoyance at the scentless but irritatingly warm breath impacting his nose.
"Get away from my face...!"
"Sorry sorry sorry! I thought Master-sama became a sleeping beauty and needed a true love's kiss to wake up, so I wanted to try it!" A shameless declaration echoed from Subaru's front, as the blurry figure waved their hand around.
"Hah! Don't ever try something like that, you weirdo...!" Subaru scrambled back, his unusually weak body screaming at the short movement. He brought his hands to his eyes and rubbed them in order to stop the incessant spinning in his head. His eyes were refusing to focus properly, vision remaining blurry and difficult to understand beyond the hues of green and the feminine shadow of a person in front of him.
"What's with my voice?" Subaru murmured. A sensation of dread pooled in his stomach.
Subaru blinked a few times, focusing on one of his palms. It was...different.
As his eyes came into focus, he realized that his hands were different from before. Calloused and pale. The fingers were long and well-groomed. The nails had been painted with a soft pink color. The rest of his arm was slender and soft, but brimming with lean muscle underneath. It was smaller than before.
"My name is Natsuki Subaru."
The voice was unmistakably that of a female. A husky voice, higher pitched than Subaru's usual but lower pitched than most of the female populations. But it was unmistakably that of a girl. Subaru's male manner of speaking wrung out awkwardly from his(her?) lips.
Subaru got up shakily, grasping onto the green walls of the room. Now that he got a good look at them, he realized they were more like foliage than anything. A brilliant, rich green of vines and leaves. The entire room was covered in plants.
The feminine figure was unusually and almost respectfully silent at Subaru's attempts to get his bearings.
After managing to stand by the wall, his knees shaking like a leaf, Subaru took a good long look at himself.
He was dressed in a black tattered shirt with silver borders. The end of its sleeves had been torn into a jagged shape. Subaru's lower body was covered by a set of white trousers. The design and stitching were quite archaic, but also quite finely done.
But the most important thing Subaru couldn't take his eyes off was the physique hidden beneath his unusual clothes. His unusually heavy chest exhibited a set of soft protrusions disturbing the uniformity of his black shirt. His hips were a bit too wide and his waist was a bit too thin. Subaru's throat was clogged up by a sense of fearful confusion.
"Are these...breasts?"
Subaru examined his body more and detected the absence of a certain tightness in his pants, a presence that was missing and the lack of which was felt keenly by him, now that he noticed it.
"What the fuck...!?"
Subaru glanced up to look for the earlier figure. She was indeed a female figure, dressed in a scandalous outfit consisting of a black bikini top and hot pants of the same colour, leaving much of her pale skin bare. A tall and very attractive woman, with long dark hair tied in an elaborate ponytail resembling the tail of a scorpion. Her eyes were a lovely rich green and her expression was simple and adorned with a wide smile.
The woman looked quite happy to simply lay her eyes upon him.
"Who the hell are you? And where am I? What happened...?" Subaru asked breathlessly, his heart pounding harder from the many uncertainties around him.
"Huh...Master-sama? Are you for real? Did you lose your memory again? I'm going to blast that stupid urinal into pieces!"
The woman looked surprised and uttered those nonsensical words. She then paused at Subaru's utterly bewildered and a touch fearful look and gave him a look over. Seemingly deliberating on something, her face twisted in anger soon enough. Subaru recoiled a bit, confused and wary.
"That thing...! It evolved! It evolved! Now I get it! Master-sama won't get that hurt by a regular urinal! Master-sama's radioactive pee must've turned it into a Witchbeast! Aarghhh...! How the hell can I beat up a urinal that managed to defeat the Great Sage? Should I use my special move...? Ugh...this much thinking is making my head spin!"
"Radioactive...pee? You..." Subaru stared at her in bewilderment.
"That's right. Master-sama is like Spider-Man, so I'm the best woman for him. I'm immune to all kinds of radiation so Master-sama can have sex-"
"Shut up youuu idioott...!!" Subaru yelled, his face red, preventing her from completing her annoying train of thought. At Subaru's yell, the woman relaxed and gave a big gormless smile.
"Looks like Master-sama is fine after all. You're back to your default state of yelling at the sweet and sexy Starkeeper Shaula! But don't worry Master-sama, I like this side of you too!"
Subaru looked away from her shining face. This woman, who was presumably named Shaula, was calling him Master and was leaving him with no time to speak. Listening to her ramblings, Subaru felt a twinge of unpleasant familiarity and a sensation of annoyance.
"Stop stop stop! Shaula! That's your name, right?"
"Yup! Master-sama's beloved Shaula, reporting from the Pleiades Watchtower, ASAP!"
"Pleiades...? Where the hell am I? Can't you tell me properly?"
"Hmmm...I guess Master-sama lost his memory after all. What should I say now...I remember Master-sama telling me something." Shaula tapped her chin with a finger, her eyes closed in thought.
"Aha!" Shaula suddenly yelled, standing in a painfully familiar pose. Her finger was thrusted in the sky, her hip rocked to the side. She then pointed her hand right at Subaru's face.
"You've been summoned to an Isekai Fantasy!"
Shaula exclaimed this set of words with her tiring boisterousness. Subaru gaped at her dumbly.
"Seriously?"
"Totally serious. I don't really know what that means...but that is what Master-sama taught me to say!"
Subaru looked at Shaula for a moment, then at his own body. It was quite different from before, with quite being an understatement.
"I have been summoned to another world as a girl!?"
===
"Whoa! Looks like I'm a total hottie now!" Subaru squealed, waving his palms in an exaggerated manner. He was currently gazing into a beautiful sight upon a small, handheld mirror procured by Shaula out of nothing, and what a sight it was.
Looking into the mirror was an extraordinarily beautiful girl. A noble, elegant face in sharp contrast with Subaru's openly excited and eager expression. Her skin was pale, and her eyes were a sparkling blue. Her hair was entirely white, akin to snow. The girl was also quite tall, approximately 6 feet tall, surpassing even Subaru's original 5'11.
In essence, her appearance was one such that it would send Subaru's heart into conniptions on sight. A beautiful girl surpassing anyone Subaru had ever glimpsed in his mundane life. Even now, Subaru's heart was beating incredibly fast, as he carefully explored his new features with a gentle hand.
However, the excitement was accompanied by a low sensation of dread and unease. Subaru's 'excited' smile was fragile and ridden with anxiety, his eyes almost wild and desperate.
This was not a clear-cut 'Isekai Scenario'. Subaru now had to deal with the unpleasant and disturbing implication of having replaced the previous owner of this current body, the beautiful, regal-looking woman whose will had been overturned by an alien parasite.
It had become clear that this woman was certainly a person who had lived.
Well-worn clothes, some scars, callouses born of hard work and the pack that the woman seemed to have carried with her were visible signs of a rich and living personality.
Subaru massaged his roiling stomach gently, putting away the mirror with a frown.
Pushing aside grim thoughts and the fact that it simply felt so wrong to be, Subaru focused on assessing the situation logically.
According to Shaula, Subaru was someone who had experienced an 'Isekai Scenario', a genre of stories popular among the young adults of his age, full of wish-fulfilment fantasy and escapism. A person, usually a teenager of around 16-17, is transported to another world, wherein he is tasked with some important quest such as killing the Demon King, and in return, is hailed as a beloved hero with legions of women and riches throwing themselves at him. A quintessential human fantasy of being removed from your current, troublesome environment without putting in an ounce of work and receiving joy and love in a 'better place'. A fantasy, that might very well be equivalent to the abandonment of their current lives.
Natsuki Subaru was not in a good mental space for the majority of his life. And as such, was an avid consumer of such media. He was self-aware enough to understand the inherent selfishness for hoping to be in an 'Isekai Scenario', but nonetheless, a world away from his own full of magic, demihumans and silver-haired waifus was too good to not dream of occurring at least once or twice. Added to the fact of him being a good-for-nothing truant who had skipped school for several months, it was a given that Subaru was simply a slothful, self-indulgent loser who had little resistance against the possibility of an 'Isekai Fantasy'.
Moving back to the assessment of everything until now, Subaru focused on recovering the memory of everything that had happened until now.
He had left his house for a late-night snack run and had bought some stuff to eat. Then, on a whim, he had decided to take the long route home, ungratefully hoping that his mom would do the remaining dishes on his own while he remained outside. Then, he had been distracted by a vague sense of nausea and had jaywalked across the main road in a haphazard manner.
And then. There had been a truck.
"Seriously...? A truck? Can this get any more cliche?"
The next set of his memories was disjointed, but it was evident he had been blown away by the truck. The next thing he knew, he was waking up to Shaula's chattering.
Accepting Shaula's proclamation of being transported into Another World, Subaru decided to analyze his surroundings a bit. His main priorities were to ascertain any differences in the laws of physics and some knowledge of the world's culture and its differences from his.
The first subject of his observation was the body he was in.
"All right, time to test this thing out," Subaru muttered, and began stretching his new limbs. However, there was a constant undercurrent of throbbing ache underneath this body that was made obvious to Subaru the moment he began stretching.
Gritting his teeth and attempting to move past the pain, Subaru touched his toes with his fingers. Surprisingly enough, his new body was much more flexible than his previous one, as well as lighter. While testing out jumps, it was quite above his previous body, leaving him both with a sense of insecurity at his past self, as well as a bit of relief at the relative amazing conditioning of his new body.
Subaru continued his exercises, testing his new limits, until at one point he was incapable of going any more. This was because of the strange sensation of pain within, that had increased to the point of leaving Subaru breathless and overwhelmed.
'Feels like my soul is hurting. I can't tell where the pain is coming from, it's just hurting me all over...'
"Master-sama, are you really fine? I know you took a nap for a buncha weeks, but mutant urinals are dangerous business. I trashed the bathroom, but that thing managed to hide from my super smell, y'now?"
Subaru tiredly turned his head to look at Shaula, who was leaning over him with a perplexed look.
"Again with the weird stuff? What's with you and urinals? I can't even tell if you are joking or not. That face looks too stupid to be alive, but maybe you're a secretly smart type character who's just playing me. I honestly can't tell," Subaru sighed.
This dynamic between Subaru and Shaula had developed surprisingly quickly. Only in a span of about 3 to 4 conversations, Subaru and Shaula had comfortably settled into a fascimile of a boke and tsukkomi set up, with Subaru as the straight man and Shaula with her comedic air-headedness.
But despite his tiresome conversations with the airheaded woman and his own observation of his surroundings, Subaru had learned a few key things.
First, that he was in some kind of tower, called the Pleiades Watchtower.
Second, this Tower was in middle of some kind of desert with no sign of civilization in sight.
Third, this woman whose body he had stolen had ventured to this Tower for some mysterious reason and had abruptly lost her body to Subaru's mind. This moment was accompanied by a severe damage to her body, causing her to bleed from all of her orifices and fall into a deep unconsciousness.
Her injuries were totally invisible, as Shaula had apparently found no visible wounds and had promptly dropped her 'Master-sama' into a special room, which held a spirit that had healing abilities.
Already Subaru's brain was overheating from the excess of information to process, on the top of the strange pain echoing through his new body. Subaru managed to stave off a headache barely. Shaula was worse off, as the 'lore-heavy' exposition she had been forced to give had turned her smooth brain nearly catatonic and Subaru wouldn't be surprised if he spotted swirls in her eyes.
"What's going on...I don't understand. According to Isekai tropes, there should be a summoner, but instead I'm stuck in the middle of nowhere with an NPC that finds it too difficult to speak properly for at least a minute."
"What!? I have been demoted to the NPC role again? Master-sama, I'm totally a player character!" Shaula moaned from her position on the ground, lying face down next to Subaru. Again she displayed her inexplicable knowledge of terms from Earth.
Subaru surreptiously observed Shaula for a minute, then sighed.
"Shaula, am I really this Master-sama you keep calling? You've got the wrong guy, because I have never seen you before in my life."
Shaula's eyes met his for a moment, and Subaru was taken aback by the sheer amount of faith in it.
"Totally yup! You're this sexy Shaula beloved Master Flugel!"
"Flugel...I know better than to try and convince you of something, but my name is Natsuki Subaru."
"Huh..." Shaula looked at Subaru quizically.
"What's wrong?"
"Master-sama said something totally weird out of blue, but since it's Master-sama, I guess it's fine."
"Hah? What was weird about my name!? It's a nice name, y'know!"
"Master-sama's name is totally amazing, but you used a different name before..."
"What...you don't mean-" Subaru's throat clenched up. Was Shaula referring to the true owner of this body?
"Yeah...it was..."
Subaru leaned forward in fearful intrigue. A sensation of guilt pervaded through his body. Subaru was understandably interested in the name of the true owner of this body, but he was also fearful of hearing it, fearful of the possibility of being party in the usurpation of someone else's life. Fearful, that he had lost his own.
"...I don't remember."
"Y-you...IDIOT!"
"Ahahah...! Sorry Master-sama, Shaula's memory specs are a bit low!"
Subaru clutched his rapidly beating heart and glared at Shaula with faint tears in his eyes.
"Master-sama...you're crying!" Shaula looked panicked.
Subaru felt droplets travel down his cheek.
A flash of light. Terribly loud screeching of tires.
Natsuki Subaru was a leech. A leech that had sucked greedily on the lifeblood of his kind parents and had spent away his days in slothful indulgence. And now he had unceremoniously caused his parents more pain and grief and had promptly decided to be a parasite to another.
This woman, with so many callouses and scars from hardwork and pain, that had arrived in this Tower to do something worthwhile, likely very important, had her life sucked on by parasite champion Natsuki Subaru. Her life had been stolen away, and granted to someone much more unworthy.
Did she have someone like Subaru's parents too, waiting for her safe arrival with hopeful eyes? Did she also forget to say goodbye in a hurry, but was desperately wishing to go back as soon as possible?
Unworthy. The word resounded in Subaru's head as he stared at the hand of the one he had usurped.
A gentle warmth surrounded him.
Shaula was embracing Subaru.
"Master-sama need not cry when Shaula is here!" she declared in her usual boisterousness.
"Just give me the word Master-sama, and I will pummel whoever made you cry with a Detroit Smash! Huh...Master-sama! Are you okay!?"
Shaula was crushing Subaru.
"G-get off me...you idiot! I'll die!" Subaru gasped in Shaula's unusually strong arms, which had gripped Subaru in a vice grip, cutting off his airflow.
Shaula let Subaru go quickly, causing him to fall to his ground harshly.
Subaru glared at Shaula in irritation, but then gave an exasperated sigh at her unrepentant face.
Subaru sighed and leaned back against the cold stone floor, his mind racing. Everything felt unreal like he had fallen into some sort of strange dream. The body he didn’t recognize, the woman who called him "Master," the odd tower in the middle of nowhere...
But whatever this place was, whatever happened next, there was no turning back now.
He had no choice but to start over. From zero.
And with that thought, Subaru's new life in this bizarre world truly began.