The Loli’s Awakening

While screaming is often perceived as an outward display of lost emotional control, this isn’t always true.

It also allows an individual to hear their own voice distinctly, offering a fundamental reassurance in their own capabilities.

Moreover, hearing one’s voice reverberate through a space can create the illusion of absolute command over that environment—as if one were a leader, empowered to deliver grand pronouncements at will.

Yet, this particular ‘leader’ now spoke with a loli voice.

“What exactly is this…”

Her loli voice.

“If this is a dream—”

Her loli voice.

“Alright, well, since this is happening anyway…”

Her loli voice.

The young girl suddenly flared with annoyance.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!”

Her cute loli voice, tinged with anger, now held a tsundere edge.

She slumped to the ground in despair.

After a long moment, the young girl swallowed hard.

Mustering her courage, she continued to gaze at the reflection of the white-haired girl in the mirror.

She desperately tried to find even the slightest resemblance to her former self, the one etched in her memory, but her efforts proved utterly futile.

In fact, she mused, if both were incinerated, their ashes would likely possess different qualities.

‘In short, I’ve become a white-haired loli, haven’t I?’

‘Can something like this really happen?’

‘At least Resident Evil has plenty of movies, TV shows, and games.’

‘Becoming a girl—well, there seem to be quite a few stories about that too.

There are plenty of those third-rate light novels online, the ones about some ‘bag’ or other.’

‘This is a manifestation of female body worship, born from the backdrop of contemporary popular culture and gender identity confusion, as expressed among male consumers.

It actually demonstrates how certain male groups, regarding issues of aesthetics, sexual orientation, and gender identity—’

‘Oh, to hell with it!

What good is thinking about any of this now!’

The young girl finally had enough of this world toying with her fate.

She was, after all, no young girl; her past seventeen years had been lived as a boy.

This fact was crystal clear, beyond any dispute.

Yet, it was equally undeniable that the soul, which identified as male, had been undeniably thrust into a female body.

This, however, did not cause her to doubt her existing memories in the slightest.

It wasn’t because there was any concrete evidence to prove it, nor any witness who could definitively state, “Yes, you are Ling Yechen’s operating system, merely installed on a new host now.”

Rather, it was because everything in her memories felt so incredibly real.

Lingering within her was a subtle, poignant emotion that, with a mere touch, brought a pang to her heart.

In the perilous forests, desolate wilderness, and city outskirts, she had been protected by her companions, desperately searching for a place to survive.

Even when it was discovered she possessed a strange constitution that attracted danger, her companions had never abandoned her.

The young girl felt a faint prickling in the corners of her eyes.

She recalled her companion, who usually seemed a bit lazy and conceited, yet could remain remarkably calm in the face of terrifying disaster, striving with all his might to protect their comrades.

A senior student?

That wasn’t quite right, as they weren’t schoolmates.

Perhaps ‘senpai’ would be better, following the conventions of band-themed anime?

Ah, whatever.

That companion had been so wonderful; she couldn’t recall the last time anyone had cared for her so deeply.

As her memories steadily grew clearer, her longing for her companion also spontaneously resurfaced.

Ling Yechen felt certain this couldn’t be the work of fabricated memories.

‘Ah, right, my name is Ling Yechen, isn’t it…’

‘How did I end up here?’

It seemed she had pondered this very question not long ago.

An airplane… the plastic texture of the window shade, coffin-like…

A flash of light seared through her mind, accompanied by a headache-inducing scream.

“Kill me…”

“I’m sorry…”

Then came the agonizing cries of that young boy.

The boy who, with tears in his eyes, had choked her to death.

After that, the 219 highway, a hellish scene under the night sky.

The sky, the color of a pig’s liver.

Abandoned cars, zombies roaming everywhere, one of them standing right before her.

That demonic zombie, with what seemed like ghastly flames flickering from its seven orifices, stared at her with the gaze of a predator eyeing its prey, then lunged with a rough, almost excessively powerful motion, like using an ox-cleaver to kill a chicken.

These memories were perplexing.

The male Ling Yechen, once 175 centimeters tall, had been utterly powerless against zombies.

Yet, the white-haired loli Ling Yechen, who had recently awakened in a strange medical pod within a truck, was delicate, frail, and easily overwhelmed—by all accounts, no match for a zombie.

The subsequent memory was of herself fleeing—naked, running barefoot on the highway, her soles soon throbbing with pain.

Now, seated on the ground, Ling Yechen lifted her foot to inspect it, confirming the presence of faint abrasions on her sole.

After running some distance on the highway, she seemed to have tumbled down from somewhere.

The vision of this body appeared to be impaired, making the road unclear, and her entire flight was a stumbling, disoriented scramble.

After scrambling over a roadside fence, she seemed to have rolled head over heels down an earthen slope.

Ling Yechen checked her arms and legs, indeed finding some minor bruises at the joints, though nothing serious.

This didn’t quite align with the extremely clumsy tumble she recalled.

Given the way she remembered rolling, a broken bone wouldn’t have been surprising.

Or perhaps, because she had become so small, the fall damage was reduced.

Ling Yechen once again looked into the mirror—and the frail, somewhat petite girl with long white hair, blue eyes, and glasses staring back at her did the same.

“Oh, wow, how embarrassing!”

Unable to bear it any longer, the young girl, her cheeks flushed, averted her gaze.

The pink curtains gently swayed, indicating the window was open.

‘Oh, right, where exactly was she now?’

As she rose to draw open the curtains, her memories continued to unfold: herself, stumbling and sprinting, finally collapsing somewhere from sheer exhaustion.

Then someone was shouting “Help!”—no, wait, *she* was the one shouting.

Pulling back the curtains, she found it was a beautiful day.

Below lay a somewhat dilapidated street, with cracked concrete utility poles lining its edge.

Beneath one, a mobile cart for selling roasted gluten stood abandoned, its owner nowhere to be seen.

Few cars traversed the road.

Across the way, three-story buildings with white tiled facades housed clothing stores and breakfast shops on their ground floors—a quintessential small county town scene.

Having grown up in a large city, Ling Yechen was unfamiliar with the sights of a border county town.

However, having watched some early TV dramas about migrant workers, such as ‘Survival of the Migrant Workers,’ at Jing Lan’s recommendation, she wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with the view outside.

The street was eerily quiet.

Ling Yechen even harbored a sliver of hope—could the zombies have all starved to death?

But the moment she lowered her gaze, she locked eyes with a young male zombie passing below.

Its tongue lolled out as it lifted its head, grunting maniacally at Ling Yechen, its tongue swaying disgustingly from side to side.

The mere sight of this single zombie shattered any aesthetic filter Ling Yechen might have had for the formerly tranquil street.

She abruptly grabbed the curtain, preparing to draw it shut.

Yet, as she turned to pull it, her gaze fell upon the metal guardrail of a highway, visible on a distant hill at the end of the street.

She recognized that guardrail.

It was Highway 219.

She should have died on that road.

She should have gone to heaven.

If she had transformed into a cute young girl in heaven, that wouldn’t have been so bad, would it?

But fate, it seemed, was fond of cruel jokes.

A good thing?

Only half of it was good.

The other half left her scratching her head, frowning, utterly bewildered yet profoundly shaken.

Moreover, Ling Yechen didn’t consider becoming a girl a ‘good thing’ at all.

It wasn’t just something she wouldn’t dare to imagine; she had never even conceived of its possibility.

‘If I’m stuck in this body forever, will I…’

Even Ling Yechen, who had always had strict upbringing and rarely encountered unusual works, had heard the term ‘female degradation’ from her somewhat worldly bandmates.

She had always considered it something only disgusting otaku would delve into.

And now… was she to be trapped in this girl’s body, slowly, little by little, transformed into a female persona…?

‘No… I don’t want to be feminized!’

The distressed young girl clutched her head, overwhelmed by terror at the thought of what she might become in the future.

Then, she inadvertently caught sight of her adorable reflection in the mirror.

Perhaps becoming a girl wasn’t inherently terrifying, but this irresistible, forceful, and brutal twisting of her destiny made Ling Yechen feel deeply wronged, even somewhat horrified.

Nevertheless, worrying herself sick wouldn’t change anything.

After a sigh, the white-haired girl ceased her futile struggle, gradually regaining her composure.

No matter how bizarre the events, there had to be an understandable principle behind them.

She comforted herself with this thought.

Maybe she could even turn back into a boy someday.

For some inexplicable reason, this rather unconvincing self-reassurance brought her a measure of peace.

Just then, the sound of a door closing echoed from outside the room, followed by slow, deliberate footsteps.

The steps halted at the threshold.

Presumably, the owner of the house had arrived.