Sirin had damaged her brain when she fell into this other world.
The brain damage left her with an extremely limited vocabulary—fewer than ten words in total, including one for a reproductive act she could no longer perform, one for the vehicle of genetic transmission, and one for the juvenile form of a certain animal.
As a result, Sirin’s sentences had collapsed into something roughly like this:
“Fuh… fuhguh…. shitdog sex-fuh?”
Fortunately for Sirin, after a few months of scraping by in this other world, there was at least one person who could understand her.
It was a miracle born of two things: Sirin’s finely honed beggar’s intuition, and the reasonably decent heart of a church priest.
In a corner of the village stood a poor little church—not one of those grand temples to the whole Pantheon, but a humble place that worshipped only the ‘Savior.’ Its priest, Peter, spoke to her.
“So you’re saying you want to squat in front of the temple all day since it’s a holy day? Can’t even talk straight, and yet you remember things like that just fine.”
Sirin grinned.
“Bastard.”
“Still, I don’t think that’s a particularly good idea. If you’re loitering around from morning, they’ll chase you off for being bad luck. Better to go in the evening. No meat to be had, but that can’t be helped.”
Sirin’s face fell.
“Motherfu…”
“Don’t look so aggrieved. That’s just the beggar’s life.”
Peter said it without a trace of sympathy.
“And as I’ve said before—if you’re going to keep babbling nonsense, wouldn’t it be better to just pretend to be mute? That’d probably serve you better for begging.”
“Ngh.”
“You don’t like this, you don’t like that… and yet you’re always hungry. As I’ve told you before, there are things you could do if you’d just keep your mouth shut.”
Peter’s gaze lingered on Sirin’s face for a moment.
“Wilson’s second floor is a bit cramped, but you’d never go hungry there. It’s a tavern of sorts, so you could even get a drink now and then. Sure, the girl there got roughed up recently, but that’s not exactly a common occurrence.”
Sirin shot him a sideways glare, but Peter continued in his matter-of-fact tone.
“For a young woman in your situation, making a living off men’s goodwill isn’t such a terrible thing. Everyone’s just scrambling to survive.”
“Your mother.”
“…I sometimes wonder if you’re doing this on purpose. You can actually speak properly, can’t you?”
Sirin shrugged.
Peter had a near-supernatural talent for deciphering her speech, but even that had its limits.
With her damaged language faculties, Sirin had absolutely no way to convey the facts that she was a heterosexual man in a woman’s body, and that she would sooner die than spread her legs for any medieval savage.
Peter sighed.
“Well, in your current state, it’d be hard to attract that kind of goodwill anyway. Why on earth do you go around looking like that?”
Sirin occasionally rolled around in mud puddles like a stray dog.
This led Peter to occasionally suspect she might genuinely be unhinged—but it was actually part of Sirin’s deliberate effort.
The struggle to become ugly by choice.
After landing in this other world, Sirin had realized that her appearance—a charisma stat of 180—was more of a liability than an asset.
To neutralize that charisma, she seized every opportunity to wallow in mud and scrape soot from the village’s communal hearth to smear across her face.
It would not be an exaggeration to call it a desperate campaign to change her race.
And Sirin had pulled off a miracle.
She had changed her ethnicity through sheer effort.
Thanks to that, everyone now looked at her roughly the way they’d look at a half-gnawed dog bone—which, as survival strategies went for a modern person dumped into a medieval fantasy land, was a qualified success.
“Where are you off to?”
Having gotten nothing particularly useful out of Peter, Sirin shrugged and got to her feet.
The holy day food wouldn’t be available until evening anyway.
Her feet carried her toward a small bakery on one side of the village square.
Nine times out of ten, something annoying would happen today.
But for the past few days she’d been out beyond the village walls, chewing on unidentifiable berries, tiny fish, and suspicious mushrooms to stave off hunger.
Now that she was in the village, she wanted to eat something halfway decent.
Sirin was peering around the front of the bakery when Marta came out from the back.
She spotted Sirin and gave a faint smile.
Marta, the bakery owner, was a kind-hearted widow.
She felt sorry for Sirin—who couldn’t speak properly and always looked a mess—and would set aside leftover stale bread and broken bits of pastry to hand over.
The kindness was appreciated.
But it also made Sirin uncomfortable.
Sirin approached without a word and pulled a crumpled cloth pouch from inside her clothes, holding it out.
Inside the pouch were a few handfuls of medicinal herbs and fungi she’d dug up in the forest outside the village.
They looked rough, but they worked.
Sirin had tested every single one on herself to make sure they weren’t poisonous.
When Peter found out, he’d been horrified and tried to stop her—but Sirin had come through it all with nothing worse than a lot of pain.
After that, Peter had started looking at her with a peculiar expression.
Marta peered into the pouch, looked briefly surprised, then smiled warmly.
“You came to give me this. Thank you, but you really don’t have to. I only—”
Sirin cut her off by pressing the pouch firmly into her hands and shaking her head.
She meant something like ‘it’s fine’ or ‘just take it’—but the words still wouldn’t come out right.
Only a low, growling sort of sound escaped her lips.
Sirin hated receiving things without giving something back, and she hated giving without reason.
This was her own way of settling the minimum debt.
Marta studied Sirin’s stubborn eyes for a moment, then finally accepted the pouch, her expression a tangle of emotions.
Pity, and the guilt of feeling like Sirin didn’t need to bother, and a small thread of gratitude toward this strange woman who could only express herself in such crooked ways.
“All right… I’ll put these to good use. I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather—I should brew some tea.”
In return for what Sirin had brought, Marta handed over a small bundle.
“Take this, at least. It’s all I have today.”
Inside the bundle were three or four small loaves—cold and hard, but whole.
Sirin took the bundle and dipped her head in a short bow.
She didn’t bother opening her mouth.
If she’d tried to say ‘thank you,’ what would have come out was probably something like “you son of a bitch.”
Marta smiled, the way someone does when they’ve gotten used to something.
“Hey, the beggar woman’s here!”
“…”
Just as Sirin had expected, the annoying thing happened.
A handful of village children spotted her and came swarming over.
They kept a safe distance and began hurling malice at her in place of stones.
“Ugh, that filthy crazy woman’s back again!”
“Hey, say that stupid crap again! Go on, say your ‘ngh ngh’ thing!”
“You’ll catch something if you touch her!”
Sirin’s brow twitched.
Every instinct screamed at her to charge over and tear those smug little mouths apart.
Repaying what she received several times over—that was Sirin’s way.
Sirin slowly raised her head toward the children.
She was going to give those little demons the cursing they deserved.
“You little—”
Before she could get the words out, the bakery door flew open and Vera, Marta’s daughter, burst out.
Vera shouted at the children.
“Hey! What do you think you’re doing in front of our shop! Get lost!”
The children faltered for a moment at the sight of Vera, then started snickering.
“Vera, your mom’s giving bread to that crazy woman again!”
“What if you turn out just like her when you grow up? Smelly and can’t even talk!”
“Do you want another beating?!”
The kids shrieked like pterodactyls and bolted.
Vera stood there, face flushed red, and turned to look at Marta.
“Mom! I told you she’s embarrassing me to death!”
“Vera! I told you not to say things like—”
Marta tried to scold her daughter, but Vera wasn’t listening.
She huffed and stormed back inside the shop.
Sirin stared at the door Vera had disappeared through for a moment.
Irritation and anger churned inside her—but alongside them, understanding.
Yeah.
Fair enough.
I’d have done the same.
So she’d let it go.
She didn’t want to make a scene in front of Marta.
“Don’t mind her. The children are just thoughtless…”
Marta said it apologetically.
Instead of answering, Sirin bowed her head—a little deeper than before.
She clutched the bundle of bread tightly to her chest and turned away.
She did her best to ignore the pity and contempt at her back, and the children’s snickering.
The bread in her hands was hard and cold, but it seemed to carry a faint warmth from Marta all the same.
That small warmth put just a little more strength into Sirin’s steps.
Sirin walked to the outskirts of the village, toward a quiet stream where no one came.
“…”
Since falling into this other world, Sirin had spent most of her time watching the stream.
The seasons came to the streamside without fail.
A cold wind sent dead leaves tumbling past; then warm snow fell, and before long everything froze white.
When the ice began to thaw, rain came and turned the ground to mud, and at last pale green shoots pushed through.
Even Sirin, who had no particular interest in the stars, could tell from her nights lying on the ground that the night sky had changed.
In that shifting landscape, the only constant was Sirin herself, crouched by the stream.
Maybe she’d gone numb.
To the passing of time, to the turning of seasons, even to the wretchedness of her own situation.
She simply existed—breathing, flowing, like the water in the stream.
Empty hours with neither happiness nor misery.
Sirin stared at her own distorted reflection in the running water with hollow eyes.
Is that really me?
A strange woman’s face, caked in mud and soot.
A twisted thing that couldn’t even express its own feelings properly.
‘Bread.’
She turned the simplest word over in her mind.
Something warm and soft to fill the hunger.
Then she deliberately moved her lips.
Plainly, naturally—to say ‘bread.’
“Your mother.”
A curse came out without fail.
It felt like someone else’s tongue had taken up residence in her throat.
Sirin closed her eyes.
She let the rising anger settle, and carefully organized her thoughts.
‘One at a time.
Slowly.
Don’t rush.’
When she opened her eyes again, they were sharp.
Sirin had not been sitting by this stream for months without purpose.
Her knowledge was limited, but her intelligence was not.
She understood her problem clearly.
The wiring between the blueprint in her head and the output device called her mouth had completely fried.
The connection between the meaning she wanted to convey and the words that actually came out had been totally scrambled.
That was why, when she tried to express gratitude, the word ‘bastard’ came out instead.
Simply memorizing words or repeating them was useless.
The moment she thought of the concept ‘bread,’ her brain had already finished preparing to produce the sound ‘bastard.’
Then there was only one method.
Abandon meaning.
Chase only sound.
Sirin watched the stream and studied the shape of her own mouth with careful attention.
Like mimicking the melody of a foreign song whose words you don’t understand—she fixated obsessively on the mouth shape needed to produce the target sound, the position of her tongue, the force of her breath.
‘Ssang.’
To make that sound… right, she had to think ‘ssi’ in her head while her mouth stupidly fell open on ‘ah’?
No, that came out closer to ‘ssan.’ So ‘ssang’ would be… think the wretched ‘jot,’ curl the tongue back, and add a nasal resonance?
Sirin watched the shape of her lips in the flowing water and traced the wiring diagram of her broken brain in reverse.
She had to figure out which meaning had been misdirected to which sound—through hundreds, thousands of trials and errors—and build her own grotesque phonetic formula from scratch.
The ‘chaen’ sound: think ‘bal,’ tongue behind the front teeth.
‘Chan’: picture ‘nom,’ press against the roof of the mouth… damn it, this was like trying to unscrew a bolt that had been torqued down with a nail.
No—if it were only that, it’d be easy.
This was more like a baby learning to walk for the first time.
But Sirin didn’t give up.
“Ssan…”
The first syllable came out something like the right sound—around the time the leaves had blazed red and then fallen, and a cold wind had begun to blow.
After spitting out countless mangled fragments of curses, as autumn faded away, Sirin finally caught hold of that first sound.
“Chaeng…”
The second syllable was forged in front of a frozen stream, hands numb with cold, breaking through the ice.
The brutal cold stiffened her tongue, and every breath seemed to freeze in the air.
After wrestling through an entire winter, as the ground began to thaw, Sirin completed the shape of the second sound.
“Tan…”
And at last, when spring came, she could form the third character.
The lips reflected on the water trembled faintly.
Almost there, damn it, just a little more.
This is the last one.
Fire blazed in Sirin’s eyes.
She wrung out the last of her strength.
She forced the broken neural circuits to bend, and controlled the twisted muscles.
In a sensation like labor pains happening inside her skull, Sirin finally completed the combination of sounds she had been aiming for.
Sirin spoke.
“Status Window.”
The word rang out clearly in the air, like the sound of a long-locked bolt finally clicking open.
The moment Sirin’s intent and her lips finally aligned—a moment that felt like recompense for the long months of humiliation and contempt.
—Ding!
And the light vanished.
With a clean electronic chime, the damned window that had been occupying a corner of her vision finally went dark.
[ Shout “Status Window” to proceed with the tutorial. ]
That insufferable message disappeared, and then, one after another, new messages bloomed into light.
[ Proceeding with tutorial. ]
[ Resetting all status. ]
[ ! Coward’s Rest Mode — For the Super Cowardly ! ]
The fog that had been pressing down on her mind lifted, and her thoughts sharpened.
Three seasons had turned since she fell into this other world.
And at last, Sirin had made her intent and her expression match.
“Coward.”
Sirin said it with a small, wry smile.
Coward.
That was the first real word Sirin had spoken in this other world.