Vincent's hand jolted away from his chest like he'd touched a live wire. His blue eyes were shaking.
He scrambled to look around the room. A completely unfamiliar space, lavishly decorated — from the bed to the chairs to the ornaments and paintings lining the walls, everything carried the look and feel of antique Western craftsmanship. Not the Chinese kind of old. The Western medieval kind.
The room was dim. Two small lamps on opposite walls gave off a faint amber glow, humming softly.
Straight ahead of the bed was a wooden door. On the left and right, two curtained windows.
Vincent's gut twisted. He spotted a mirror on the table not far away and lunged for it — grabbed it, held it up.
A beautiful face stared back at him from the glass.
Clang.
The mirror slipped from his fingers. Vincent staggered backward, nearly fell, and stood there struggling to accept what he'd just seen — not the fact of transmigrating again, but the fact that he had transmigrated into a woman.
I've lived nearly thirty years across two lifetimes and I have always been a man — a perfectly upright man (or thereabouts) — and now this!
He thought back to how it had all started: waking up in the Harry Potter world in the body of a boy named Vincent Moriarty whose parents were both dead, starting from rock bottom and grinding his way up over years of hard work. He had finally, finally cleared the first round of interviews for a Muggle Studies professor position at Hogwarts. One interview with Dumbledore today stood between him and a completely different life.
He had even dug out the Sneakoscope Dumbledore had gifted the original Vincent years ago — a Christmas present — specifically to stir the old man's guilt and stack the odds in his favor.
And then he'd gone to sleep.
And woken up as a woman, with none of her memories.
Is the universe so bored that it has to kick me back to hell every time things start looking up? If I have to live out the rest of my days as a woman — dealing with hormones, probably getting married off, having kids, the whole ordeal —
The room felt like it was tilting. Vincent let out a long, silent scream.
...orz.
A few minutes later, he forced himself to pull it together.
No matter what — let's at least figure out the three classic questions first. Who am I, where am I, what do I do.
First priority: confirm whether this is actually another transmigration. If it is, figure out what kind of world this is — because not every world is as relatively safe as the Harry Potter universe.
He picked up the mirror again and took a proper look at the body he'd ended up with.
Tsk. These hands. This face. These arms. Genuinely pale.
This chest. This waist. These legs...
Ahem.
From the layered skirt she was wearing, this woman appeared to be from a wealthy family. Early twenties.
Vincent carefully checked inside the body for any trace of magical energy. Nothing. Either this woman was completely ordinary, or this was a world without supernatural abilities entirely.
He pulled a thick book from the shelf and flipped it open. Dense lines of script he couldn't read a single character of — further confirmation that he'd transmigrated again. And without being able to read or speak the local language, gathering information the straightforward way was off the table.
He walked toward the window — and noticed he was barefoot. Looked down to put on shoes.
Then paused.
...Where are my feet?
Couldn't see them at all.
Vincent's brain quietly supplied the answer. He cross-referenced what he'd felt a moment ago with what he'd seen in the mirror, and arrived at a clearer picture of his situation. Then he thought of the face he'd just seen in the glass.
A woman with both looks and figure — a genuine goddess by any standard.
Any other time, that would have been something to appreciate. Right now, being that woman himself, he felt nothing but helplessness.
Haah—
He let out a long sigh. A lovely, melodious sound floated back to his own ears.
"...Even the sighing sounds good."
Vincent shook his head, pulled on the small leather boots beside the bed, and tiptoed to the left window. Eased the curtain open just a crack. Bright light streamed through the gap.
A few seconds to let his eyes adjust. Then, through the crack — a faint shimmer of gold on deep blue.
He opened the curtain a little wider.
An endless ocean stretched out before him, meeting the sky on the horizon in a clean, flat line. Several kilometers out, the faint outline of land — or an island — sat in the distance.
Vincent pulled his gaze closer. Masts. Railings. A flag with some kind of emblem. A row of seabird-like creatures circling the mast.
So I'm on a ship. And the ship is out at sea. No wonder he'd felt so sick when he woke up — exactly like he'd been on a boat for days and then downed a whole bottle of something strong.
That answered question two: where am I.
Now for the other two.
Just then, a few figures passed outside the window — stumbling slightly, like men who hadn't slept off their drink yet, talking in a language he couldn't make out.
He looked at what they were wearing.
Loose sailor shirts. Dreadlocks with beads. Belts with Baroque-style buckles. Long boots. Tricorn hats.
That's textbook pirate gear.
And that flag on the mast—
This is a pirate ship?!
Vincent yanked the curtain shut. His mind raced.
A beautiful, clearly well-born young woman. On a pirate ship. There is exactly one reason something like that happens — and it isn't because she's the captain.
So what do a shipful of ruthless pirates do when they've got a pretty girl on their hands?
Obviously they—
Right then.
The look in Vincent's eyes changed. He scanned the room, landed on the glass mirror on the table. He grabbed it, took it to the bed, wrapped it in the blanket, and broke it as quietly as he could.
Then he took a sharp shard, wrapped one end tightly in a torn strip of bedsheet to make a handle, and tucked it inside his clothes.
He went back to the window and eased the curtain open again — and began to watch.
To be continued…