Satou did not have high expectations for Edson Hotel. Its outward fa?ade and where it was situated had tempered his hopes for a cheap stay at best. A tidy room, a decent bed, a shower, and some privacy was all he had hoped for; but even that, had at first seemed too much to ask. In a way, then, it was to his fortune that he had gotten at least that much.

  Room 205, though not attractive, was not displeasing either; and it was his, for seven nights. A single bed and a nightstand. A desk, a chair, and a wastebasket. That was all as far as furniture went, at least in this room. A door by the entrance led into the bathroom with all the fixtures you’d would expect to find inside: a ceramic western toilet, a shower head, a sink with two valves on either side, above which, in front of him, was a mirror cabinet.

  Satou blushed, when he saw her hazel eyes, stare back into his.

  “Hahahh—” Like narcissus, he had been charmed. If being called 'miss' hadn't induced in him a sense of disembodiment, this had certainly done it. He ran his hand through his tousled jet-black hair, and failed to hide himself smile. A beautiful charming smile. “What a beauty indeed…”

  Hanging the satchel aside, he took off his coat, and found parts of it were slick with grease. Since when?

  Ah, right. He remembered. From the lift, when he had to crawl through it.

  He unbuttoned his black vest, but froze the moment he heard the wheels of a trolley near outside his door. There was muffled-talking, at first; then someone walking away. Crockeries clanked, followed by a gentle knock. Satou answered the door, and found a maid with a serving cart. “Yes?” He asked. Without a word, she handed him his meal, and then did he remembered that he had ordered dinner. “Ah, thank you,” he said, and carried it over to his desk. There, he examined it.

  A mug of hot coffee, and a bowl of soup (or broth) with pulpy mushes floating inside it. This was his dinner.

  He tried a sip (it was hot, and a little tasteless), and left it at there for the time being. He undressed, and, a palpable sense of relief was what washed over him once he took off his black vest. His clothes, though not cumbersome, stiff, or bulky; having seldom worn tight-fit clothes except on formal occasions—which were rare in his life to begin with—to suddenly find himself wearing four garments at once was a change too drastic for him not to perceive.

  I need to buy some looser clothes, one of these days. He could not keep wearing the same set of clothes, after all. I have to keep these clean, for the time being. I don’t have spares clothes, after all… They do look really good on me though. That they did. And neither did they look cheap. His shirtsleeve was pricy-cotton: that much he could tell by touch. Likewise, so was his coat, his vest, his wallet, and everything else in his satchel. It was of some solace, perhaps, that he was fortunate, as far as his station and capital was concerned; but all this also reminded him of just how far he had strayed from King’s Crossing: that he shouldn’t be here, but up there, four hundred meters up that wall, somewhere else.

  Exhausted, sore all over, he threw himself onto the bed. His head spun terribly, but soon it abated. The fan on the ceiling did not move. He looked over to the nightstand, and under a black rotary telephone saw an issue of the Daily Gazette. He reached for it, picked it up, and held it up towards the ceiling. ‘8th Jan 7-687’ it was labeled, which threw him off.

  He had no way to know if the newspaper was the latest edition, but to see Jan next to such a ridiculous number did not sound right in his ears. The date brought to mind images of a far distant future, and not a modernized fantasy set in a bygone era, during an economic boom before the great depression, which, at least Ednin downtown had so far resembled.

  The front-page was taken up by a monochrome photograph of a flooded street. The title read, ‘Dreary Day. X Street Station Severely Damaged By—’ but that was all he could manage. The rest of the words blurred in his eyes, incoherent.

  “I’m tired,”

  He had yet to take off the rest of his clothes, eat his meal, fall asleep, and he might as well take a shower while he was at it—wash away the dirt, the grime, his exhaustion—which entailed that he first undress. He took off his gloves. Then his shirtsleeve—only to blush, look away, smiling, when he saw his ample breasts, peek through his shirtsleeve.

  This intoxicating feeling—was it pride? Delight?

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  He unbuttoned his cuffs, but froze the moment he felt something sharp get dampen by the cloth. He almost cut himself trying to take it out, but there it was, inbetween his fingers, a razorblade, held in place with a paperclip under one of his cuffs. Who knows why it. It seemed dangerous to carry such a thing on your person. What’s she, a spy? The stray thought made him smile. A silly idea. But, what if it’s true? That would certainly explain the gun, make things more interesting.

  He tried to take off his trousers, and failed. Ah, right. He had yet to take off his fantasy-esk boots. The long-laces ran on till his knees; but thankfully he did not have to untie it all to loosen it. With a bit of effort, both right came off.

  In the bathroom, faucet’s valves—red and blue—both offered him a jet stream of cold water. To his misfortune, so did the shower. He opened the mirror cabinet, and found the basic essentials for his personal hygiene inside, sealed and bulk-made: a toothbrush and a toothpaste, as well as a bar of soap and a few packets of shampoo, which had a nice if a bit strong fragrance to it. He brushed his teeth, and only now noticed his abnormally sharp canines. He could seriously hurt someone if he bit down on someone. Like me, biting my own tongue.

  Finally, it was time to take a shower. Once he stood underneath it, he braced himself, and turned on the nob as far as it would go. The rapid stream of frigid-cold water jolted him back to life. He bit down his teeth and tried not to yelp, and failed. That distinctly feminine moan she had made—anyone next door could’ve very well heard it.

  He ran his hands over his skin, and admired how rivers and rivulets flowed down his hips and his bare legs. He closed his eyes, and under the deluge saw himself just as well with his hands. His figure, lean, not frail but firm, excited him; but not in the same way others might’ve found themselves excited, he imagined, were they to see his naked body. Such feelings were strange to him. Even to himself, he could not put it into words; yet he was nevertheless charmed. A part of him found it vain that he should be so fixated on his body; but he felt no pangs of shame for it but felt a pride he had never known.

  Shivering, naked, he dried himself with a towel, but failed miserably when it came to his hair. He dabbed it as much as he could with a towel, but somewhere deep in the recesses of his mind he had a vague idea that he shouldn’t be so rough; so he stopped, lest he ruined his hair. A novel experience, certainly, the hassle of being a woman were—something he had to come to terms with!—but a welcoming hassle that nevertheless filled him with joy and delight.

  He looked down at his long and slender legs, perfectly hairless and unblemished, at his fair-skin white and soft, and thought for a moment that they looked fat and stocky; but no. When he looked at them in the mirror, he saw that they were perfect. “My anorexia,” Satou concluded. Being so used to his thin legs, his eyes had yet to adjust to his new body.

  Feeling cold, he picked up his clothes from the floor and put them on: his undergarments, then his shirtsleeve, but also his trousers, because he found it awkward to sleep with his legs bare. Still wet, his clothes stuck to the surface of his skin.

  When he turned the lights off, his room did not vanish immediately, but everything in his eyes dimmed, then gradually faded away. As the moonlight settled, a column of light took its shape on the wall and the ceiling on his right: the lights from the street below. He pulled the sheets over himself and laid his head down, and found it to be heavier, rougher, than the ones he was used to at home. But the mattress was alright. Stiffness, in fact, was what he needed after such a trek.

  Now all that was left for him to do was to fall asleep. But excitement ruled out any thoughts for it.

  He tried to remember his final moments, but only succeeded in summoning disjointed fragments. He wasn’t sure if all this was not just his fancy, but he remembered shivering like a leaf, being in a drunken stupor, a pain one could not quite call pain. His fingers had struggled to hold onto the desk, and the silence afterwards had been deafening. Likely, he had died shortly after. Then he had seen void, for an eternity that to him had lasted an instant. The next thing he knew, he was here, in the middle of a train station, in the body of a young woman, “In another world…”

  The fan on the ceiling did not move. Like a picture like by moonlight, it was as if time itself had come to a standstill. The ticking of the clock, the rumbling of the central heating pipes behind walls, and the soft hum that came from the airshafts—all of it heightened the silence of the night, and all for the better. He wanted this precious moment to last a little longer,

  “Forever…”

  What a surreal thing to happen to you, transmigrating to another world. Did everyone who died met such same fate? How many times had he dreamt of this day to happen to him? How many times had he fantasized about being where he was, right now? His first day had started off rough, but everything had worked out in the end, thank God for that! He was still confused as to how he had made it, here, all the way from King’s Crossing, or even to this world; but it didn't matter. None of that mattered. All that mattered, was that he was here, in another world, “In an–other–world.”

  Exultation and restlessness thumped in his chest. His emotions ran a tumult.

  Every single day, he had lived only out of compulsion’s sake. He was miserable, unhappy, and unloved, and he saw himself miserable, unhappy, and unloved till the day he died. If this was life, he remembered thinking. Then what was the point? He hated his life so much. Living had been so painful. Tears would not stop flowing now. And he was crying, crying with a smile on her face, shedding tears of sadness and joy.

  Dramatis Personae, which I had planned on posting alongside the prologue back in November of 2019. When the time came though, I, of course, did not. I decided not to publish it then, because I thought it would be premature. I still believe I was right.