“Drip… drip…”

A familiar melody circled through Ye Zhuangyan’s mind, seeming never to end. As time passed, it grew clearer and clearer.

Ye Zhuangyan felt awful, and his body curled up involuntarily.

His lips pressed together slightly, as if he were dreaming of something disturbing.

Unease and uncertainty filled his heart.

He saw an unfamiliar girl, a massive ancient tree, and an endless abyss.

As he watched the girl slowly walk away, his heart instinctively ached. He didn’t know why, but he didn’t want her to leave him.

His hands clenched unconsciously, as if trying to grab hold of something.

With the increasingly clear and urgent chimes urging him on, Ye Zhuangyan took a step forward—and fell into the endless abyss of his dream…

And then—

He woke up.

More precisely, he was jolted awake.

Ye Zhuangyan coughed violently, trying to cough up something lodged in his throat.

He kept drawing in oxygen mixed with the stench of decay in the air.

Tears welled at the corners of his eyes.

Ye Zhuangyan came fully awake. It was then that he suddenly realized he seemed to have adjusted to his body without even noticing.

His mind wasn’t as foggy as before, either. He could finally think clearly.

Ye Zhuangyan pushed himself upright with both hands.

His cheek felt a little itchy, so he opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was long, dark-green hair spilling down.

Ye Zhuangyan instinctively raised a hand, brushed a few strands off his cheek, and tucked them behind his ear.

The long hair felt soft and light.

Ye Zhuangyan could clearly feel the silky strands slipping between his fingers.

Like a girl’s hair.

The thought made Ye Zhuangyan freeze. At last, he realized something was wrong.

The stench of decay in the air tickled his nose.

Ye Zhuangyan stood up and looked around.

Abandoned equipment. A shattered glass pod. The uneven concrete floor was littered with glass fragments and pale, murky liquid.

The place was clearly eerie from every angle.

And yet, at first, Ye Zhuangyan had instinctively avoided thinking about it.

But when he finally did, he fell silent.

Because he realized he’d overlooked another crucial question—

Who am I?

“Ye Zhuangyan, a corporate drone who’d just turned twenty-six. Every day, he left early and came home late. Apart from work, his phone and the desktop computer in his rental apartment took up all the time he had left after working, sleeping, and eating.”

Ye Zhuangyan thought back over his life. Nothing seemed out of place.

Wait. If everything was normal, why was I here?

What happened to me before I got here?

Ye Zhuangyan furrowed his brow and tried hard to remember what had happened before he arrived.

“It was a night, I think. That day… it was raining hard, and the cat knocked over a flowerpot. Then the dog chased the cat… Wait, why am I thinking about that?”

Ye Zhuangyan shook his head and kept trying to remember.

“A black umbrella. A bridge. And beyond the bridge… water?”

Then it suddenly hit Ye Zhuangyan.

I… might already be… dead?

Did I drown?

“Then why am I still alive?”

“Alive…”

A somewhat hoarse, yet surprisingly pleasant voice sounded in Ye Zhuangyan’s mind.

Ye Zhuangyan’s heart gave a sudden jolt. The voice was hoarse, but it was unmistakably a little girl’s.

“My voice…”

“Crack—”

The sudden noise startled Ye Zhuangyan.

Following the sound, he saw a rat had knocked a small piece of equipment into a mirror.

The light was so dim that Ye Zhuangyan hadn’t noticed the mirror before.

As if in a daze, Ye Zhuangyan walked over to the somewhat damaged mirror.

A scene appeared in her emerald-green eyes.

Standing before the mirror was a petite girl who seemed somewhat familiar to Ye Zhuangyan.

Her long, dark-green hair fell to her waist. The hair on either side of her upper temples curved slightly upward, like a pair of fake cat ears.

Her emerald eyes were like a forest beneath the falling night, dark and deep. They lent the already delicate features of the girl a faintly sickly, fragile beauty.

Of course, the most shocking thing was that the girl wasn’t wearing a thing!

There wasn’t a single thing on her.

She stood there, completely exposed to the air, without the slightest cover.

It was undeniably a sight that would make any normal person feel embarrassed.

But Ye Zhuangyan didn’t feel embarrassed in the slightest.

All he felt was calm.

A calmness without emotion or desire.

Reflected in the mirror, that expression held a hint of something called danger.

Even Ye Zhuangyan was surprised by this calmness—almost frightened by it.

Then the twenty-six years of human conditioning kicked in, and Ye Zhuangyan covered her private parts with both hands.

She no longer felt any shame, but she still chose to cover herself.

Because she felt she ought to be human. Strangely, though, she’d accepted quite naturally that she was now a girl.

Ye Zhuangyan turned the slightly cracked mirror around to face the wall.

Then Ye Zhuangyan began searching through the abandoned laboratory.

It was clearly her first time in this place, yet Ye Zhuangyan felt inexplicably familiar with it.

As if she’d lived here for a long time.

Following a gut feeling, Ye Zhuangyan really did find a wardrobe with surprising ease.

Ye Zhuangyan opened it. Inside were only a few women’s garments and a pair of blue-and-white striped panties.

And every garment was a white spaghetti-strap dress.

Ye Zhuangyan had wanted to pick something more masculine, but those were the only options in the wardrobe.

A little disappointed, Ye Zhuangyan put on a dress and the panties anyway.

After all, no matter what, it was better than wearing nothing.

“Hm? What’s this?”

Ye Zhuangyan spotted a few symbols on her bow tie.

They seemed to be some kind of writing, but not Chinese, English, Japanese, or anything like that.

It was a script Ye Zhuangyan had never encountered before, yet she could read it.

She pinched the bow tie and examined it closely, making out the writing.

“Sa…ya?”

“Is that this girl’s name?”

A vague figure inexplicably flashed through Ye Zhuangyan’s mind.

Forget it. I shouldn’t think about that now.

The most important thing was to find a way out of this abandoned laboratory.

But…

Ye Zhuangyan couldn’t find any shoes.

That meant she was still barefoot.

But strangely, even after walking barefoot for so long, Ye Zhuangyan didn’t feel any pain.

Even when she’d accidentally stepped on broken glass earlier, the sole of her foot had only felt a little itchy. The skin hadn’t been cut.

After realizing how unusual this body was, Ye Zhuangyan even picked up a shard of glass and tried scratching her arm a few times.

A light scratch had no effect. Even pressing a little harder did nothing. Only when she scratched forcefully did a faint pink line appear on her pale arm.

As for her senses, Ye Zhuangyan could clearly feel even the slightest contact: the direction of the breeze, changes in temperature, how heavy an object was, and whether the surroundings were hot or cold.

Perhaps because she hadn’t suffered any real harm or experienced truly harsh conditions, Ye Zhuangyan hadn’t felt any pain or discomfort so far.

She hadn’t put on clothes because it was cold and she needed to keep warm. Nor had she done it out of embarrassment.

She’d done it purely out of habit, after living as a human for twenty-six years.