Chapter – 01
The star-filled sky seen from the bottom of the ravine was more beautiful than any scenery she had ever witnessed before. It stood in complete contrast to her current self, sprawled across a mountain of illegally dumped garbage after tumbling down the cliff.
(What a terrible way to die… My name really doesn’t suit me at all.)
Misaki Hanazono gave a bitter smile as she compared her life to her elegant-sounding name. Raised in an orphanage, never knowing the faces of her parents, fired from a workplace overflowing with harassment… and after clinging to someone’s words — “Climb a mountain and your life will change” — she had climbed one only to end up like this.
Well, her life certainly had changed. More accurately, it was about to end.
She had no family, no friends. No one would even notice if she disappeared. Something important must have been injured in the fall; she couldn’t move, and the pain was unbearable. On top of that, she was freezing, and her consciousness was already fading.
At this rate, she would probably only be found someday as a pile of bones.
(God, please… at least in my next life, let me become a more beautiful… flower…)
…No, actually, flowers live such short lives. That would kind of suck too.
With that final thought, Misaki’s consciousness faded away.
Some time later, her awareness slowly resurfaced.
It felt like waking suddenly from a dreamless sleep on a peaceful morning. Yet her body wouldn’t move properly. Her mind was perfectly clear, but it felt as though her entire body had been locked into a rigid mold.
She struggled for a while, trying to move, but eventually gave up. She couldn’t move, but she could breathe. More than that, she felt warm and strangely comfortable. And despite doing absolutely nothing, she somehow felt full — as if she were eating without realizing it.
(Is this what heaven is like? It’s different from what I imagined…)
A place where you could live without doing anything.
No work. No responsibilities. In that sense, it was easy. But unbearably boring.
She had no idea how much time passed.
She was so bored. If only she could at least move her limbs freely and run around—
“NNNIIIIIIIAAAAAAAH!?!!?!”
It happened completely suddenly.
With a sensation like someone yanking her hair, she was dragged out of that comfortable place.
Startled into a panic, she screamed at the top of her lungs. The scream was so loud that even she was shocked she could produce such a voice. Amidst it all, she thought she heard a strange trumpet-like jingle — Pa-pa-ra-paa! — echoing somewhere. She had no idea what was going on.
Her body floated briefly through the air before hitting the ground.
Above her stretched a brilliant blue sky. She realized she was outdoors, lying on the earth.
(That scared me… What was that?)
Thinking that, she pushed herself up with both hands. Before she could even celebrate being able to move again, something green entered her vision, making her freeze in shock.
It was a person.
A giant person with completely green skin — at least three times her size — collapsed nearby.
“KYAAAAAAAHHHH!?!”
Terrified by the bizarre sight, she screamed and fled at full speed.
The mysterious trumpet melody played again and again from nowhere, and even that frightened her enough to make her cry.
She pumped her limbs desperately as she ran through towering grass. Where was this place? Strange plants larger than her own height surrounded her.
Could this really be heaven?
Or was it actually hell?
(Someone, anybody, help me! Can’t anyone hear me!?)
Louder. Stronger.
She kept shouting as she ran, hoping someone would hear her.
Another strange electronic sound — ping! — rang out somewhere, but she had no time to care. The scenery shifted from grassland to a forest of gigantic trees.
Eventually, after running and screaming for so long, the strange melody in her head faded and finally stopped. Once the weird sounds disappeared too, she gradually calmed down.
Then she stumbled upon a spring.
(Maybe I should drink some water and calm down… Is it safe to drink?)
She leaned over the water—
—and froze.
Reflected on the surface was a brown object staring back at her.
It had pitch-black eyes like a clay haniwa figurine. Sprouting from the top of its head was a beautiful flower unlike anything she had ever seen, creating an absurd mismatch.
Slowly, she looked away from the reflection and down at her own body.
The hand she raised was the same brown color as the rest of her body.
So were her legs.
The simplest comparison would be an oversized radish with arms and legs attached to it. Though unlike a normal daikon, it was shorter and rounder — more like a turnip-shaped creature.
“NO… NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!”
Realizing she was no longer human, she screamed once again.
To begin with, Misaki could never scream this loudly. She never had. Not even when she was hit or shoved down stairs. She had always bitten her lip and swallowed her cries.
…Which meant she was no longer Misaki.
Something else entirely.
As she wailed in incomprehensible terror, something suddenly dropped beside her with a dull thud. Startled again, she shrieked.
Looking closely, she realized it was a bird twitching weakly on the ground.
(D-Did it die…? No, just fainted… because of my scream?)
A plant whose scream could kill or knock people unconscious.
There was only one creature she knew that matched that description.
(Don’t tell me… I reincarnated as a mandrake…!?)
It wasn’t the plants around her that were gigantic.
She was tiny.
After all, she was a mandrake. They weren’t exactly known for being large plants. Which also meant that the “green giant” from earlier probably hadn’t been a giant at all.
Apparently, she had been reborn into another world as a mandrake.
A world where mandrakes existed meant a world whose ecosystem she understood absolutely nothing about.
How was she supposed to survive here?
(God, I did wish to become a beautiful flower before I died… But I never once asked to reincarnate as a mandrake…!)
And so, drowning in despair, she cried and screamed once more — just like a proper mandrake.
