I woke up with the kind of headache that makes your skull feel like it's been split open and stitched back together with rusted wire. Every inch of my body ached—not the kind of dull soreness from a bad night's sleep or a stiff neck from falling asleep on the keyboard—no. This was a deep, soul-weary pain, the kind that seeped into your bones like rot.
My limbs felt like wet noodles. My skin was rough to the touch, like it had been scrubbed with sandpaper and left to dry out in the wind. My stomach twisted and turned with hunger so raw it felt like something inside me was gnawing on my insides just to stay alive. I didn't even know you could feel that hungry.
And then the cold hit me.
Not the chilly breeze of an autumn morning. No, this was biting. It stabbed at my arms like icy needles, unforgiving and sharp. I shivered as I sat up, the thin, scratchy blanket slipping off me like it had given up trying to help a long time ago.
That's when I really took in my surroundings.
I was in a shack. And I use that word generously. It was more like a wooden box pretending to be a room. Tiny, cramped, suffocating. The walls were so thin I could see the light seeping in through the gaps between the planks. The floor was just packed dirt with a few broken boards nailed across it. There were no windows. No furniture. Just straw, dust, and the smell of everything awful a human nose could be cursed with.
And I wasn't alone.
There were seven other bodies huddled around me—some older, some younger, all curled beneath filthy rags or half-torn blankets. All asleep. All breathing that same sour, sweat-soaked air. The kind of air that clung to your skin like a second layer of grime. I could barely breathe without gagging.
I shifted, trying to push myself up further—and that's when my bare foot stepped in something wet and squishy.
The sound. The texture. The smell.
"...Is that... animal poop?"
The words slipped out before I could even stop myself, my voice hoarse and cracked, like I hadn't spoken in days. I recoiled so fast I nearly knocked over the boy sleeping next to me. My face twisted in a mix of horror and nausea. I scraped my foot against the floor in frantic, useless motions, trying to wipe the filth off on the already-disgusting dirt, but it wouldn't go away. It stuck. It smeared.
I almost threw up right then and there.
I covered my mouth with my hands—God, even my hands smelled—and tried to breathe through my nose, only to immediately regret that, too. Sweat. Manure. Mold. Something dead. It was like the whole shack had been sealed in suffering.
And all I could think was—
This isn't a dream.
This is real.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Tight. Willing myself to wake up—to be back in my apartment, hunched over my laptop with a half-finished instant ramen cup on the table and a Word doc full of broken plot points. I wanted to feel the scratch of my cheap bedsheets, hear the hum of the fridge, see the tiny blinking cursor waiting for me to continue writing.
But when I opened my eyes…
The filth was still there.
The foot-stain was still there.
The ache in my bones? Still there.
And the air? Still thick with the scent of desperation and decay.
This wasn't a nightmare I could jolt awake from.
This was my new life.
My head fell forward into my hands, and I laughed—bitter and breathless. It sounded more like a dry cough. I couldn't even cry. I didn't have the tears for it. Maybe I left them behind with the woman I used to be.
Akira Tsukihara.
God, what I wouldn't give to be her again. Miserable? Sure. Unappreciated? Absolutely. But at least I had running water. At least I had soap.
Now? I was just Aira.
Aira, the nameless peasant girl who sleeps in filth, eats who-knows-what, and wakes up surrounded by strangers too beaten by life to even stir in their sleep.
No wonder no one wanted to read these stories. I didn't even want to live in one.
But here I was.
And something told me this was only the beginning.
I didn't want to believe it. I couldn't believe it.
This couldn't be my life now.
I'm not Aira. I'm not some filthy peasant girl in a rotten wooden hut, surrounded by sleeping siblings I don't know and a stench that clings to my lungs. I'm Akira Tsukihara. I'm a writer. I live in Tokyo. I drink cheap coffee and eat cold cup noodles while sobbing over rejection emails. I curl up in bed at night with a half-written manuscript and hate myself for writing another chapter of a story I know no one will ever read.
That was my life.
And I wanted it back.
Even if it sucked. Even if it was lonely. Even if no one remembered my name.
I wanted that back.
At first, I told myself it wasn't real. It couldn't be. It was just a stress-induced nightmare, a lucid dream sparked by too many sleepless nights and too much caffeine. Maybe if I concentrated—if I focused hard enough—I could jolt myself awake. That was a thing, right? Lucid dreaming. People trained themselves to control it. To wake themselves up.
Maybe this was that.
Maybe I was just stuck.
Trapped inside a really, really messed-up dream.
I shoved the rough blanket off me, pushing myself upright with limbs that still didn't feel like mine. My knees nearly gave out beneath me, but I forced them to move. I had to get out. Had to see something—anything—that would confirm I was still dreaming.
I stumbled out of the cramped straw mattress, nearly stepping on someone's foot—no, a tiny foot. One of the kids, curled up like a lump of breathing rags. Siblings, I reminded myself bitterly. My siblings. At least, Aira's.
I caught myself on the wooden wall, the splinters digging into my palms. It was real. Too real. The wall was rough, jagged. No dream had ever felt this real. The sharp pain, the grain of the wood scraping my skin—it all screamed "reality." But I still refused to listen.
I crept to the crooked little mirror hanging near the door. It was cracked in two corners, the surface fogged with age and grime, like it hadn't seen a drop of clean water in years. But it was enough.
My hands trembled as I reached up to touch my face, still holding onto the desperate hope that I'd see the woman I used to be—the face of Akira Tsukihara. Tired, yes. Pale and plain, sure. But mine.
But what stared back at me?
Wasn't me.
It was a girl.
A young girl, maybe twelve, maybe thirteen. Her skin was browned from sun exposure—rough, weathered. Her hair wasn't black anymore—it was dark brown, thick and knotted, like it had been hacked at with a kitchen knife. Her cheeks were thinner, her eyes wide, sunken a little with fatigue and hunger. And her hands…
God.
My hands.
Gone were the soft, pampered fingers that had typed thousands of words into empty documents. Now they were chipped, jagged, coated in grime. My nails were uneven and cracked. Callouses had formed along my palms. Laborer's hands. A child's hands.
"No…" I whispered. My voice was a breath, not even strong enough to echo. "No… this isn't real. This isn't me. This can't be me."
My knees buckled. I fell, graceless and shaking, onto the dirt floor. It was cold. It bit through the thin dress I wore like it didn't care how fragile I was. My breathing sped up. My heart pounded against my ribs like it wanted to escape this body even more than I did.
I clawed at my scalp, fingers tangling in my filthy hair.
Rip it off. Rip it off.
Like it was some mask. Some illusion. Like if I just tried hard enough, the truth would break through and I'd wake up, gasping, sweating, but home.
But I didn't wake up.
I stayed there.
On the floor.
And that's when it happened.
The memories came.
Like a door in my mind creaking open, slowly, painfully. A cold wind blowing through the halls of everything I thought I had forgotten. Things I had written—horrible things. Stories I swore I'd buried, erased, deleted in a fit of rage after too many rejections. Stories that weren't romance. Stories born of spite and bitterness and loathing.
A world I had made out of vengeance.
The Kingdom of Seraphis.
A cruel, withered realm ruled by fear, starvation, and blood. Where nobles devoured the poor like wolves, and love was a joke—an illusion that got you killed. I had built it when I was angry. I had written it when I hated the world and the people in it. A twisted fairy tale meant to punish every reader for not reading the stories I wanted to tell.
And now…
I was inside it.
Not as a heroine.
Not even as a villain.
But as a nobody.
Aira.
I had never written her. She wasn't meant to matter. Just background noise. A random peasant girl among the thousands I used to populate my pages with blood and despair.
And now…
I was her.
I curled in on myself, hugging my knees, pressing my forehead to the dirt.
I didn't want to be here.
I didn't want to be her.
But no matter how hard I begged, no matter how many times I told myself this wasn't real—
The stench didn't go away.
The cold didn't go away.
The pain didn't go away.
I was trapped.
In a nightmare of my own making.
And the worst part?
I had no one to blame but myself.
It hit me all at once—like the floodgates of my memory had been kicked open, and everything came surging through, too fast, too loud, too much.
Seraphis.
The Kingdom of Seraphis.
I remembered.
God, I remembered everything.
The name echoed in my skull like a bell tolling doom, over and over again. Seraphis. A world I had created during my lowest moments, in a spiral of resentment and disillusionment. A twisted fantasy built from the ashes of every rejection letter I ever cried over. Every editor who told me my work was "not quite what we're looking for." Every reader who ignored my stories in favor of something safer, something shinier.
And so I made this place.
I had spent months building it—drawing maps by hand, sketching out borders, writing the names of towns and capitals and battlefields. I remembered sitting on my apartment floor with an aching back and an open notebook, scribbling down the elaborate political systems I had designed from scratch. Kingdoms that hated each other. Noble houses locked in centuries-long blood feuds. An aristocracy that fed on the misery of the poor like leeches on rotting flesh.
I remembered the histories. The timelines. The betrayals and the revolutions. I remembered the characters—kings with golden masks, queens who murdered their husbands in cold blood, knights who turned on their orders in the name of corrupted justice.
I had written magic into the bones of this world—ruthless, volatile, and costly magic. Nothing came without a price in Seraphis. Nothing.
And in the middle of all that death and decay and intrigue…
Was her.
Aira.
I didn't even name her at first. She wasn't a character. She wasn't even a background NPC.
She was just… a statistical casualty. A placeholder. A peasant girl born into a village I made to burn down later in a minor side plot. She wasn't meant to live. She wasn't meant to matter.
And now?
I was her.
My knees were scraped raw from the dirt. My back ached from the straw bed. My stomach twisted with hunger so sharp it felt like it was eating itself. I had never known this kind of pain. Never imagined it would feel like this.
"Why?" I choked out, my voice so thin it barely scraped the air. "Why her?"
Why me?
I had written hundreds of stories. Dozens of characters. I had seen every version of this scenario in other books too—the reincarnated heroine, transported to a fantasy world, blessed with beauty, talent, and power. A dazzling second chance. A glittering destiny. That's how it was supposed to go.
Not this.
Never this.
They always got to wake up in silk sheets. In towering castles. With magic glowing in their veins and servants lining up to praise them. They always had flowing golden hair and eyes like jewels. They had knights falling at their feet, princes asking for their hand, mysterious mentors waiting to train them into greatness.
And me?
I had none of that.
No beauty. No fortune. No magical gift. No prophecy. Just filth under my nails and dried mud on my feet. Just the smell of pig manure and the sound of someone coughing blood in the shack next door. Just bone-deep exhaustion and a hunger that didn't fade with sleep.
"This… this isn't fair," I whispered.
It came out of me like a sob. Not loud, not dramatic. Just a pathetic murmur from someone who already knew the answer.
Because it wasn't fair.
But fairness had nothing to do with it.
I wasn't special.
I wasn't chosen.
I hadn't been summoned by some goddess to bring peace to the land or defeat some demon lord. I hadn't been blessed with a magical artifact or some overpowered cheat skill. I hadn't even been noticed.
No. I was just dropped here.
Like trash.
Aira. A nobody. A peasant girl in a village so irrelevant it wasn't even named in most of the stories I wrote. A daughter to a farmer who worked until his spine broke, who lived one bad harvest away from starvation. A sister to half a dozen children who would never know luxury, who would never read, who would likely die before they turned thirty.
I was background noise in a world I made to be cruel.
And now I had to live in it.
No power. No allies. No agency.
Just dirt, and hunger, and the gnawing truth that this was all my fault.
I buried my face in my hands, shaking. Not crying—there were no tears left in me. Just trembling. Cold, hollow trembling.
I had dreamed of being pulled into one of my stories before.
But never like this.
Never as her.
The first week?
Hell.
No, worse than hell. Because in hell, at least you know you're supposed to suffer. Here, I was still holding on to some idiotic belief that this wasn't real. That I could just wait it out, like a power outage or a bad dream. That maybe if I stayed still long enough, someone—or something—would notice this mistake and undo it.
So I refused.
I didn't talk. I didn't help. I didn't eat. I barely even moved.
I spent hours just staring at that cracked mirror by the door, the one with the warped reflection that barely even looked human some days. I kept thinking that if I just focused hard enough, I'd blink and see my real self again. Not this dirt-covered farm girl with dead eyes and tangled hair. Not Aira.
But the girl in the mirror never changed.
And hunger doesn't wait for denial to pass.
By day three, I was dizzy just from standing. My stomach felt like it was caving in on itself, growling and twisting like a wild animal trapped in a cage. But I still refused the food. I didn't want to validate this world by eating its scraps.
Then my "mother"—Mira—snapped.
She grabbed me by the wrist with hands like dry bark, dragged me to the firepit where the pot of porridge was bubbling, and shoved a wooden bowl into my hands.
"Eat. Or starve," she said, flat and tired, like someone who'd said it a hundred times before. "No one's got time to pamper the mad girl."
I wanted to yell at her. Tell her she wasn't my mother. That I had a life—a real life—back in Tokyo, with a rent-controlled apartment and a broken rice cooker and a laptop full of half-finished novels.
But I didn't.
Because I couldn't even lift my arms without shaking.
So I ate.
It was… awful. Watery porridge, so thin you could see the bottom of the bowl. Barely warm, with maybe two grains of salt if I was lucky. But it was food. And my body clung to it like it was divine nectar.
After that, something shifted.
Reality set in like mold crawling up a damp wall—slow, suffocating, and impossible to ignore.
By the end of the first week, I knew.
I had no choice.
No one was coming to save me. No reset button. No mysterious stranger revealing I was the long-lost heir to some hidden throne. Just this. Just mud and chores and aching limbs and the constant knowledge that this world—my world—had no use for someone like Aira.
So I did what every nobody does in Seraphis.
I worked.
They woke me before dawn. Every single morning. The sun barely rising, the frost still clinging to the edges of the thatched roof. Mira would shake me by the shoulder and mutter, "Water. Pens. Firewood," in the same order like a cursed ritual.
First was the well—half a kilometer away, down a rocky slope. I had to haul water in these two mismatched wooden buckets tied to a splintering yoke that dug into my collarbones. My hands would go numb from the cold. Sometimes I slipped. Once, I cut my palm open on a jagged stone and had to wrap it with a strip of old cloth while Mira yelled at me for bleeding on the dinner prep.
After that, it was the animal pens.
God, the stench. You think you've smelled something bad? Try shoveling out week-old pig shit that's been soaking in rainwater and rotting straw. Flies buzzed around me constantly, and I swear one flew into my mouth once. I nearly vomited. Mira didn't care. She just told me to scrub harder.
Breakfast wasn't much better than dinner—coarse bread, sometimes with dried herbs if we were lucky, and a chunk of something unidentifiable that I prayed was edible. Sometimes the bread had mold on it. No one even batted an eye. They just cut it off and chewed in silence.
Then, the fields.
Tilling. Weeding. Hauling stones. My fingers blistered by the second day. By the fifth, the skin had split. I started wrapping them with old fabric scraps, just to keep the dirt out. But it still got in. It always got in.
By sunset, my legs would be trembling. Not from fear—just from sheer tiredness. I wasn't built for this. Not this body, not this life. Every muscle ached. Every joint throbbed. I couldn't even stand up straight without my spine screaming at me.
And then came the night.
Oh, the joy of sleeping in a tiny wooden room crammed with seven other people. I was squished between two of my younger siblings—babies, basically. Both of them kicked in their sleep. One wet the bed. I didn't even react. I was too exhausted to care. There was no space to stretch, no clean blanket, no silence. Someone was always snoring. Someone always farted. Sometimes Mira and Father whispered about money, and sometimes they just… cried.
There was no rest. Not really.
Only the next morning.
Only the next list of chores.
Only the next reminder that I had written this hellhole into existence—and now, I had to survive it.
Not as Akira.
But as Aira.
And somewhere in the back of my mind, under all the pain and the filth and the hopelessness… a tiny ember burned.
Because if this world was truly mine…
Then maybe—just maybe—I could find a way to rewrite the ending.
I used to think I was poor.You know, "artist poor." Skipping meals to pay for coffee and convenience store meals, whining over rejection emails in my tiny Tokyo apartment, pretending I understood suffering just because I once cried in a laundromat.
God, I was so stupid.
Because this? This was real poverty. The kind that didn't come with second chances or digital distractions. The kind that reeked of livestock, rot, and sweat that never truly washed off. The kind that sank into your bones and whispered in your ear: This is all you'll ever have.
I longed for the smallest things.
A hot bath. Not even a luxury soak with bubbles and lavender, just water that didn't leave a layer of grime on my skin. I dreamed of soft sheets—not threadbare ones full of holes and lice, but smooth cotton, fresh and warm from the dryer. Silence. Privacy. The sacred space of being alone. How had I ever taken that for granted?
I'd once lit candles and called it "atmosphere." Now, if we had a candle, we rationed the wick like it was gold.
Every morning was the same. The rooster crowed. Mira nudged me awake. I groaned. She'd sigh, tug my blanket, and then shuffle off to start her impossible list of chores. Her hands were always moving, her back always bent. Mira was kind—kind in that way tired women are, where love is expressed in food and blankets and scolding—but she was tired. All the time. I didn't blame her.
Then there was Garet, the father I'd never written. He was as silent as a shadow. Strong, weathered, with eyes that never seemed to soften. He left before sunrise to hunt or trade or… whatever it was farmers did to survive in this hopeless village. When he spoke, it was in grunts or short, clipped commands. He wasn't cruel. He was just tired too, I think. Tired of scraping by in a world where hard work barely kept your family alive.
Toren, fifteen, was the spitting image of Garet—both in looks and personality. Gruff. Distant. His face always dirt-stained, his voice flat with exhaustion. He resented me, I could tell. I wasn't pulling my weight when I first arrived, and he noticed. Everyone noticed. Even now, he rarely spoke to me beyond a glare or a scoff.
Elsie, fourteen, was the backbone of the house. Mira's second pair of hands. Quiet, efficient, and far too mature for her age. She did the bulk of the cooking and cleaning before I got myself together. And even now, I could feel her watching me, judging silently to see if I'd finally start behaving like a real member of the family. She wasn't cruel. Just wary. Worn down. Careful.
Ronan was eleven. Mischievous. Rebellious. A miniature hurricane with sticky fingers and a wild grin. He was always scheming to sneak out of chores—feigning illness, playing dead, hiding in the barn. I should've found it funny. Maybe Akira Tsukihara would have. But Aira? Aira wanted to scream at him.
Marla, the nine-year-old, broke my heart. She was sweet—far too sweet for this place. But sick. Constantly coughing, always pale, her movements weak and fragile like she might snap in the wind. She couldn't work. Could barely eat most days. Mira would stroke her hair and whisper lullabies while I looked away, feeling like a monster for not knowing what to say to a dying child.
Then came Joren. Seven years old. The clinger. He latched onto me like I was his favorite blanket. He followed me around constantly, asking endless questions, poking at my sleeves, babbling about goats and bugs and stories. I tried—really tried—to be patient. But after the tenth time he woke me up with a stick in my ear, I nearly snapped.
And finally, the twins. Lana and Lira. Five years old. Pure chaos. One screamed, the other sang. One cried, the other bit. They were tiny agents of disorder, scattering flour, breaking bowls, wetting beds, fighting over air. And me? I had to babysit them. Because apparently, if you're not strong enough to till soil, you're good enough to corral demon children.
So here I was.Once a respected—if underappreciated—romance novelist.Now, a glorified babysitter with dirt under her nails and goat shit on her boots.
Every day blurred into the next.Scrubbing floors with icy water. Chopping vegetables so hard my fingers bled. Wiping snot off twins who used my skirt like a tissue. Chasing Joren through the wheat fields while he screamed that he saw a dragonfly the size of my face. I didn't care. I was just trying not to pass out.
The food was still trash. Tasteless gruel, chewy bread, and once—a blessing from the gods—a strip of salted fish. I nearly cried eating it. It had flavor. It had meaning.
There were no dresses. No ballrooms. No charming suitors lining up to fall in love with me.
Just fields. Manure. Fatigue. Screaming.
And worst of all?
I was starting to hate children.
The irony wasn't lost on me. The failed romance novelist who once wrote heartwarming stories about found families and adorable orphans now fantasized about stuffing socks into the twins' mouths and locking Joren in the barn for an hour of peace.
I stood outside one morning, staring at the wheat fields stretching endlessly under a bleak sky. The sun was barely up. My hands were blistered. My back ached. Behind me, someone was crying. Someone else was yelling. And in front of me?
A massive pile of manure waited to be shoveled.
My jaw clenched. My eyes twitched.
I looked up at the sky—gray and heartless—and muttered under my breath:
"Whichever god reincarnated me as a poor commoner farmer girl... I am going to kill that god."
Because this?
This wasn't reincarnation.This was punishment.And I wanted answers.