Free Web NovelChapter 2: The Other Side of the Glass [1]
In a luxurious bedroom.
A young man in his late teens slept soundly on his bed, with his chest neither falling nor rising, his hands lying lifelessly by his side.
Then,
Without warning, his body convulsed... like a man who had just fallen off a cliff in his dreams.
Zen’s eyes flew open as his body jerked upright, gasping heavily.
His lungs burned as he sucked the air desperately, and his heart hammered against his chest violently.
*Badump! Badump! Badump!*
Each frantic beat of his heart clearly echoed in his ears.
His vision swam.... blurry at the edges as sweat dripped down his forehead, stinging his eyes.
His shirt was soaked through, clinging to his skin.
He pressed his hand on his sternum, trying to calm his wildly beating heart.
’What the hell...’
Slowly, his eyes began to adjust, and an unfamiliar room came into focus.
’Where am I?’
This was not his apartment.
His place was small, barely enough space to turn around without knocking things over.
This place felt a little larger than his.... and much cleaner and more beautiful.
A desk sat against the wall, with a single book on it.
It also had a touch of medieval architecture.
Zen blinked several times, trying to understand the situation he was in.
’Did someone bring me here? Did I pass out from overwork and crash at a friend’s place?’
But he didn’t remember drinking last night.
He didn’t remember anything after...
Suddenly, he paused.
The memory suddenly hit him as to how he was on his way home from work when he suddenly saw a lottery counter and decided to try his luck, and won nothing but a strange antique mirror.
When he was checking the mirror sitting on the backseat of the cab, its surface rippled.
And ---
Pale, transparent hands emerged from it, pulling him inside with an unimaginable force.
Then, after that ---
He only felt the sensation of falling in the endless freezing darkness.
He didn’t even remember how long he was there.
But he could still say it was a considerable amount of time.
It was scary.
And lonely.
He didn’t want to experience something like that ever again.
The feeling of constantly falling into the endless darkness.
But.
’Did that.... that really happened?’
There was no way right. The thought itself was ridiculous, absurd even.
But, it felt... so real.
He quickly shook those wild thoughts away.
He must have hallucinated from the overwork of the all-nighters he did last week.
His brain, probably starved for sleep, decided to invent some feverish nonsense dreams.
He rubbed his forehead.
’I really need a long vacation, maybe somewhere with no computers and especially away from that damned baldy manager.’
That mirror thing had to be a dream.
He fell asleep in a cab, and the driver... or someone... a rare kind stranger decided to help him.
He looked around the room apartment he was in: the polished wooden floor, tasteful curtains, and art paintings on the wall.
’The person who helped me must be quite loaded.’
He swung his legs off the bed and stood up.
The world tilted.
His steps stumbled, but he caught himself at the last second from falling.
His body felt disconnected, and his center of gravity felt off, as if he had been asleep for a week and his limbs had forgotten how they worked.
He steadied himself against the bed frame and waited for the dizziness to pass for a moment.
As the vertigo receded into a dull throb.
"What the --"
A high-pitched, younger voice came out of his mouth.
His eyes widened, freezing in place.
That... that wasn’t his voice.
His voice was low-pitched and rougher, older.
This voice sounded younger, high-pitched, and unfamiliar in its cadence.
Zen’s blood turned ice cold as his eyes slowly paused on his own hand.
What registered in his eyesight were the hands of someone far younger, paler, and slimmer than he was.
He didn’t have the familiar scar on his thumb from a cooking accident years ago.
His gaze traveled downwards, registering the lean chest beneath the white shirt and the lean legs that didn’t belong to him.
Zen stood there staring at the body, which was clearly not his.
"What in the actual fuck is this ...?"
A curse flew out of his mouth before he could stop himself, and the same unfamiliar voice echoed in his ears, giving him panic.
’No, no no no no.’
This isn’t really happening, right?
Transmigration?
That was the kind of stupid plot device he used to read in webnovels in his free time.
The one where some overworked loser or fatty weeb died by truck-kun and woke up in fantasy with cheat abilities and a harem.
He had always thought they were entertaining garbage, but not something that could actually happen.
He never actually believed that he wou---
’Wait, did I die?’
Or is he still dreaming?
He pinched his arms and inhaled deeply, trying to check his olfactory senses.
Pain flared in his arm, and a faint floral scent entered his nose.
He could still feel his senses.
’I-It’s... not a dream.’
As they say, we can’t smell, taste, or feel pain in dreams.
He looked around frantically, trying to make sense of what was happening, before his eyes fell on the dressing mirror to the left of the bed.
*Gulp!*
He stared at it for a moment and let out an audible gulp.
’This will not pull me inside, right?’
His legs moved on autopilot, carrying him to the mirror in shaky, uneven steps.
Each footfall came cleaner as his mind slowly but surely adjusted to his new body.
And before he knew it, he was in front of the mirror.
The reflection staring back at him was a handsome, younger face in his late teens, with messy, short black hair that fell artistically across his forehead, a look that felt almost deliberate.
He had a triangular face with high cheekbones, a straight nose, and a lean, athletic body.
He was handsome in every way possible, probably the most attractive face he had ever seen.
But those eyes.
The color of ghostly grey seemed to hold no warmth, staring back at Zen with unsettling intensity that made him want to look away.
Even though it was just a reflection.
Zen’s mouth opened and closed several times as he touched his face, pulling his cheeks to check if it was really real.
’It’s not a... mask.’
He really transmigrated.
The thought sat in his mind as a stone dropped into still water, sending ripples of denial and acceptance.
’I actually transmigrated like those shitty webnovel protagonists.’
How was this even fair? He was not even hit by a truck.
Heck, he was not even dead to transmigrate.
He was just simply thrown into this stranger’s body by that shitty mirror he won in the lottery.
Just then.
The air in front of him flickered, and a grey rectangular light panel snapped into existence.
*Ding ---!*
Zen flinched.
A floating screen with lines of glowing text scrolled across its surface.
— ◈ [ Status ] ◈ —
Name: Mikael Morwell / Zen Ashcroft
Rank: Tier 1 (Mid)
Level: 16
Exp: [0%—[37%]———————100%]
Class: Magician
Affinity: None
Abilities: None / ??? freēwēbηovel.c૦m
Curse: Soul Drought
Talent: Spellcasting (Divine Grade), Melodic Supremacy (Elite)
Strength: 1.1
Endurance: 0.8
Agility: 1.3
Essence: 0.9
Willpower: 2.1
— ◈ [ Status ] ◈ —
*****
