“Good morning class. Please turn in your homework from last night - long division assignment, pages 36 through 64.”
Mr. Barnes had that tone. The one that meant business. The one that made everyone suddenly very interested in their backpacks.
I sighed.
Apparently a little too loud.
Mr. Barnes’ eyes found me like heat-seeking missiles. He set down his coffee mug slowly, deliberately, the way teachers do when they want you to feel every second of what’s coming.
“Mika.” He said my name like it was its own complete sentence. “Let me guess.”
I felt the heat crawl up my neck before I could stop it. I gave him my best sheepish grin - the one that had gotten me out of at least forty percent of situations like this. Maybe forty-five.
“The Vampire Murderer?” he said.
The class erupted. Not mean laughter exactly - the kind that happens when everyone knows the joke and you’re standing in the middle of it. Kenji in the back row did that thing where he fake-coughed my name. Maya just shook her head like I was a lost cause she’d given up on months ago.
I sank a little lower in my seat.
Mr. Barnes held up a hand and the room settled. He looked at me with that expression teachers get when they’re trying to decide between disappointed and genuinely concerned.
“Mika. It is perfectly fine to have a hobby.” He paused for effect. “It is NOT perfectly fine to read during my class, during lunch, during PE, during what I can only assume was also during your sleep based on the circles under your eyes.” Another pause. “Your schoolwork comes first. I’ll give you until tomorrow.”
“Thank you Mr. Barnes,” I said quietly.
“Don’t thank me. Do your homework.”
The rest of the school day passed in the way school days do when your brain has decided it would rather be literally anywhere else. Teachers talked. Boards got written on. Someone’s lunch in the microwave smelled like regret. I sat through all of it with The Vampire Murderer open in my lap under my desk, heart hammering every time a teacher walked past, turning pages carefully like I was defusing something.
By the time the final bell rang I had finished chapter thirty-seven.
Kenji caught up with me at the door. “You’re gonna fail math.”
“Probably,” I agreed.
“The Vampire Murderer isn’t even that good.”
I stopped walking and looked at him with what I hoped was the full weight of my disappointment. “Kenji. Lord Valdris just turned the entire merchant guild into his personal blood bank and framed the king for it. That is LITERATURE.”
Kenji stared at me for a moment. “You need help.”
“I need chapter thirty-eight,” I corrected, and pushed through the doors into the afternoon.
The sun was doing that thing where it sits low enough to be annoying but high enough that you can’t really complain about it. I pulled The Vampire Murderer out of my bag before I’d even cleared the front steps.
Chapter thirty-eight. Lord Valdris was consolidating power in the eastern provinces. The political maneuvering alone was-
Here’s the thing about reading while walking.
You stop seeing anything that isn’t the page.
The words, the world, Lord Valdris’s beautifully constructed web of manipulation - all of it so much more real than the sidewalk, the street, the very large truck that apparently decided today was the day.
I didn’t even hear it.
One moment I was reading.
The next-
Nothing.
-----
The nothing lasted a while.
Then it didn’t.
The first thing I noticed was that everything felt wrong in a way I didn’t have words for. Not pain exactly. More like… displacement. Like someone had taken everything I understood about having a body and shuffled it like a deck of cards.
Two hands. Two feet. A spine that went from here to there.
Gone.
Instead I felt - wide. Flat. Something that moved not with legs but with a ripple that started somewhere behind my thoughts and ended at edges I couldn’t locate. I had no fingers. I had no toes. I had no sense of where my face was supposed to be.
I had the very strong impression I was in water.
Cold water.
Very large cold water.
SYSTEM ACTIVATION DETECTED.
INITIALIZING…
WELCOME, MIKA.
The words appeared not in front of my eyes but somehow inside them. Blue-white text floating in a darkness that was also somehow not dark.
We regret to inform you that Truck-kun has claimed another victim.
Your soul has been flagged for reincarnation.
Standard processing would have delivered you to the world of The Vampire Murderer as a background character in Chapter 12 - specifically as Merchant Aldric’s third cousin who appears once and is never mentioned again.
However due to a clerical error on Floor Seven of the Reincarnation Bureau - we are not at liberty to disclose what happened on Floor Seven - you have instead been reincarnated as a Spotted Eagle Ray on Earth 6214.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
For the inconvenience of this error you have been granted:
- One (1) Active System Interface
- One (1) Beginner’s Guide
- One (1) Newbie Package (contents sealed)
We apologize for any inconvenience.
Good luck.
I stared at this for a very long time.
Then:
Wait. WHAT?
I’M A FISH??
WHAT IN THE ACTUAL HELL IS THIS??
I DID NOT ASK FOR THIS. I DID NOT SIGN ANYTHING. I WANT TO SPEAK TO A MANAGER RIGHT NOW.
A pause. Then the system responded with an energy I was not prepared for.
…Noted. Escalating complaint to Bureau Oversight.
Please hold.
I held. What else was I going to do. I didn’t even know how to move this body. I was just sort of… existing in water… being flat… trying not to think too hard about the fact that I no longer had a spine in any traditional sense.
Several minutes passed.
Your complaint has been reviewed by Bureau Oversight.
Their response is as follows:
“The slot in The Vampire Murderer has been filled. Merchant Aldric’s third cousin is already someone else. Furthermore the Bureau would like to point out that the user is, in fact, alive, which is statistically better than the alternative. The Bureau considers this matter resolved.”
If you would still like to change your situation please close your eyes and mentally state: I want to change.
Oh I am DOING that. RIGHT now.
I closed whatever I had that passed for eyes and thought as hard as I could: I WANT TO CHANGE.
Something happened. A shift. A pulling sensation like the universe briefly considered it.
Then it stopped.
CHANGE REQUEST PROCESSED.
RESULT: No eligible slots available in any system-compatible world within acceptable reincarnation parameters.
SECONDARY RESULT: You are still a ray.
And then - I felt the newbie package disappear. Just gone. Like someone snatching something out of my hands.
ARE YOU SERIOUS RIGHT NOW??
The system’s response came back faster this time. Sharper.
User submitted a change request despite having been granted a functional system, electromagnetic detection abilities, a defensive tail capable of delivering a medically significant venom, and a second chance at life in a healthy body.
The Newbie Package has been temporarily suspended pending user demonstrating basic gratitude.
Additionally: continuing to escalate to management for a situation that management has already reviewed and closed will not produce different results. It will produce increasingly shorter responses from this system.
You have been given a gift.
We suggest using it.
I wanted to scream. I genuinely wanted to open my mouth - my weird flat ray mouth that I was still figuring out where exactly it was located - and just absolutely lose it.
But something in that last message stopped me.
We suggest using it.
I floated there in the dark water. Being flat. Being a ray. Being very much not in math class and not in The Vampire Murderer and not anywhere I had expected to be this afternoon.
Fine, I thought. FINE.
The system seemed to sense the shift in me. When it responded again the tone was - not warmer exactly. But less sharp.
Thank you.
Displaying current status:
╔════════════════════════════╗
║ EAGLE RAY STATUS ║
╠════════════════════════════╣
║ Name: Mika ║
║ Species: Aetobatus narinari║
║ Common: Spotted Eagle Ray ║
║ Level: 1 ║
║ EXP: 0/50 ║
╠════════════════════════════╣
║ STATS ║
║ Health: 17/20 ║
║ Mana: 0/0 ║
╠════════════════════════════╣
║ ABILITIES ║
║ ? Electromagnetic Detection║
║ [PASSIVE - ACTIVE] ║
║ ? Venomous Barbed Tail ║
║ [ACTIVE - LOCKED LVL 3] ║
╠════════════════════════════╣
║ EVOLUTIONS: None yet ║
╠════════════════════════════╣
║ ? WARNING: USER STARVING ║
║ Locate mollusks or ║
║ crustaceans immediately ║
╚════════════════════════════╝
I stared at the health bar. 17 out of 20. And it said starving.
How do I find food? I thought at the system.
Your electromagnetic detection is already active. Focus. You will perceive the electrical fields of living organisms around you. Follow them.
I didn’t know how to focus with a brain that currently lived in a flat body with wings instead of arms. But I tried. I went still - stiller than I already was - and I stopped thinking about Mr. Barnes and Truck-kun and Floor Seven of the Reincarnation Bureau and Lord Valdris and everything else.
And then I felt it.
The world lit up.
Not with light. With something else. Pulses. Tiny electrical signatures firing in the water around me like a map drawn in lightning. I could feel the heartbeat of something small to my left. The slow chemical churn of something buried in the sand beneath me. The distant rhythmic pulse of something much larger moving far away.
I didn’t want to think about that last one.
The small thing buried in the sand was close. Close and stationary and radiating the electrical signature of something that was very much alive and very much not paying attention.
A mollusk.
I knew somehow that it was a mollusk. The system had loaded that knowledge into me the same way it loaded whatever passed for muscle memory into these wings.
I moved toward it.
Moving was - strange. Deeply strange. I had spent fourteen years understanding that forward motion required legs and the alternating push of feet against ground. Now I rippled. My whole body became the motion, wings rising and falling in a rhythm that felt like breathing felt like something I had always known and was only now remembering.
I almost ran into a rock.
Overcorrected. Spun sideways. Did something undignified that I will not be describing in detail.
But then I found the rhythm. That subtle tilt of one side, the answering lift of the other, the way my whole body became the direction I wanted to go. The mollusk’s electrical signature grew stronger. Closer. Right there in the sand below me.
I hesitated for exactly one second.
Then I reminded myself I was starving, I had 17 health points, and dignity was a concept that belonged to people who still had spines in the traditional sense.
I ate the mollusk.
It tasted like ocean and salt and survival and something I was going to have to make my peace with because I had a feeling this was going to be my diet for the foreseeable future.
NOTIFICATION:
? EXP gained: +1
? Current EXP: 1/50
? Health restored: +1 (18/20)
I floated there processing this.
One experience point. Forty-nine to go before level two. And somewhere above me the surface of the ocean moved with light I could sense but not yet see, and somewhere below me the seafloor stretched away into distances I had no map for yet, and somewhere in a world I would apparently never reach Lord Valdris was consolidating power in the eastern provinces without me.
I thought about that for a moment.
Then I thought about the electrical map that was still lighting up the world around me - dozens of signatures, hundreds maybe, a whole ocean full of things I could feel before I could see them.
Forty-nine experience points to level two.
And then whatever came after that.
And after that.
The world, I thought slowly, might actually be my oyster. In a more literal sense than I had previously considered.
That was when the system chimed again.
NOTICE: User behavioral assessment complete.
RESULT: Acceptance of current situation detected.
As such the Newbie Package has been restored.
Please find enclosed - one (1) Newbie Package, contents as follows:
? Beginner’s Guide to Electromagnetic Detection (Interactive)
? Ocean Current Navigation - Volume 1
? Local Predator Identification and Avoidance (STRONGLY RECOMMENDED)
? Evolution Path Preview (Locked until Level 5)
? Emergency System Contact (3 uses remaining)
And one bonus item - added by Bureau Oversight as an additional apology for the Floor Seven incident:
? The Vampire Murderer - Complete Collection
All 847 chapters including the unreleased ending
Available for mental reading during rest periods
Note: Lord Valdris wins. You’re welcome.
I went completely still in the water.
All 847 chapters.
Including the unreleased ending.
I didn’t have hands anymore. I didn’t have a face that could properly express what I was feeling. I was a flat cartilaginous fish creature floating in an ocean on a planet called Earth 6214 with 18 health points and one experience point to my name.
But somewhere in whatever passed for my chest right now something that felt a lot like joy did a complicated little flip.
Maybe, I thought, Floor Seven wasn’t entirely a disaster after all.
I ate another mollusk.
EXP: 2/50
Let’s get to work.
