Shizuku woke up to birdsong, the soft scent of hay, and a faint ache in her lower back from sleeping on a bed that could generously be described as "gently lumpy straw death." Her first thought wasn't gratitude for surviving another day, nor was it awe at the peaceful morning air in a fantasy village. It was, in fact, one pure, desperate thought:
I would sell my soul for a chocolate bar.
She sat up, rubbed the sleep from her eyes, and stared blankly at the ceiling.
"Alright. Today's the day. No more forest disasters. No more sugarless suffering. I'm going to find sweets. I don't care if I have to raid the local bakery or craft caramel out of fire magic and desperation."
Unfortunately, just as she swung her legs off the bed and stood up with all the dramatic resolve of a protagonist preparing for battle, the village square exploded into screaming.
At first, she thought someone had discovered she took a second bread roll last night.
But when the screams turned into shrieks of, "Monster! It's coming through the trees!" followed by the distinct sound of livestock panicking and something very large crashing into a wooden fence, Shizuku peeked out the window and sighed heavily.
Of course. A monster attack. Because her life wasn't chaotic enough.
Down in the square, people were fleeing in every direction as a giant creature tore through a chicken coop like it was a tissue box. It had scales, tusks, possibly antlers, and the kind of attitude you'd expect from something that just got woken up from a thousand-year nap.
Shizuku grabbed her cloak and bolted down the stairs. She ran straight to the group of guards clumsily trying to throw spears at the thing like they were auditioning for the "least effective fantasy defense squad" award.
"Hey! What are you doing?!" she shouted, pointing at the chaos. "Cast something at it! Use magic! Lightning! Fireballs! Debuffs, anything!"
The guards looked at her with the expressions of people who'd just been asked to speak fluent Klingon.
"Magic?" one repeated, confused.
"Yes! You know! Elemental spells? Pew-pew? Kamehameha? Gandalf-style nonsense?"
They stared.
She stared back.
One of them slowly raised his pitchfork in what he must have thought was a valiant gesture.
"Oh no," Shizuku muttered. "Oh no, no, no. These guys don't even know what MP is. I'm in a world with NPCs who skipped the tutorial."
The monster reared back and charged toward a group of screaming children.
And that's when something inside her snapped—not a heroic sense of duty, but sheer, sugar-deprived frustration.
"I did not survive Tokyo rush hour, flaming slime wolves, and a complete dessert drought just to let a scaly bacon beast squash some kids."
Without waiting for permission or common sense to intervene, Shizuku stepped forward, raised her hand, and focused on that little spark inside her—the one that still remembered the heat of fire blooming in her palm back in the forest.
"Okay, lizard-pig. Time for a tutorial boss fight."
A column of fire shot from her palm and slammed into the monster's side with an explosion of smoke and fury. It roared, stumbled back, caught fire briefly, then shrieked like an oversized kettle and fled into the woods, trailing smoke and badly scorched ego.
The children she'd saved stared at her in wide-eyed awe. The villagers around the square had frozen mid-scream, mid-run, mid-pitchfork throw. Silence stretched like a bad loading screen.
Shizuku straightened her cloak, adjusted her singed bangs, and said, "You're welcome."
And that's when all hell broke loose.
"She summoned flame from the void!"
"She's a witch!"
"No, worse—a demon in disguise!"
"She's cursed! She'll burn the village!"
One elderly man looked at her, screamed, and immediately passed out.
"Wait, what?" Shizuku blinked. "I literally just saved your kids. That thing was about to turn them into barbecue sauce!"
But the mob wasn't listening. Someone threw a turnip at her. A woman crossed herself dramatically with a loaf of bread. A child cried. The village chief pointed an accusing finger and shouted, "Seize her!"
"What in the glitchy cutscene is happening right now?" Shizuku yelled, ducking behind a barrel as a group of villagers charged her with ropes and farming equipment. "I'm not a demon! I'm a gamer! There's a difference!"
Apparently, the difference didn't matter.
Despite her flailing protests and deeply uncoordinated attempts to run away while dodging shovels, she was eventually overpowered by sheer numbers and, embarrassingly, tripped over her own cloak.
Someone smacked her on the head with a wooden spoon.
She woke up a few minutes later tied up in a barn, guarded by two men holding pitchforks like they had any clue how to use them.
"This has escalated way beyond reasonable panic," she muttered, struggling against the ropes. "I've seen this plotline. It never ends well for the overpowered protagonist with no clue how the world works."
Outside the barn, the village chief was hunched over a table, carefully writing a letter.
"To His Majesty, Lord of the Kingdom," he dictated dramatically. "We have captured a flame-wielding demon disguised as a teenage girl. She arrived from the forest and burned a beast to ash with cursed magic. Please send holy knights and a certified exorcist immediately."
Shizuku groaned. "Flame-wielding demon? Honestly? That sounds like a cool boss title, but I would prefer 'adorably misunderstood magical girl.'"
Later that night, after hours of being guarded by people who looked more afraid of her than she was of them, Shizuku decided enough was enough.
She wriggled, twisted, bit through the rope with a combination of fire magic and sheer sugar-deprived rage, and eventually broke free. She crept through the barn, snuck past the snoozing guards (who were definitely not trained professionals), and made it to the back exit.
She grabbed a cloak from a laundry line, tossed it over her head, and bolted into the night with all the stealth of a panicked raccoon in cosplay.
The final touch of humiliation came when she tripped and landed directly in a manure cart. It squelched.
"Lovely," she whispered. "Stealth: ten. Dignity: zero."
As she squished her way through the back roads under cover of darkness, she looked up at the starry sky and groaned,
"This was supposed to be a quiet reincarnation. Manga, naps, magic sweets, maybe a cute sidekick. Instead, I'm sugar-deprived, publicly labeled a demon, and on the run with mystery powers I can't explain in a world that thinks fire magic is Satan's sneeze."
And yet, even through the ridiculousness of it all, she couldn't help but laugh—quietly, bitterly, and maybe just a little manically.
"You know what? Fine. Bring it on. I've played worse survival games. I'll find sweets, I'll figure out this mess, and maybe, just maybe, I'll blow something up along the way."
With that thought, she vanished into the night, a fugitive fire mage in a world that didn't believe in magic.
To be continued...