Chapter 1 : It’s just that the gender has changed

Kkyaaaak!

“…Ah, what the hell?”

It was a nasty sound to hear as a morning alarm clock.

Well, alarm clocks are designed to wake people up with annoying noises anyway.

But even so, this was an ear-splitting racket.

Waking up this irritated in the morning was a first since that time he’d been jolted awake by snoring in the sleeping room of a jjimjilbang.

It’s a long-awaited holiday, damn it.

Let’s get some sleep!

He deliberately glared at the source of the noise with a grumpy expression.

“?”

But what he saw wasn’t some inconsiderate jerk disturbing everyone else’s sleep.

It was a crow.

A flock of black crows circled round and round in the sky.

What kind of bad luck was this going to bring?

Then he suddenly realized their size was bizarrely enormous.

They were definitely high up in the sky, yet each one looked almost as big as a cloud.

“Uh, um.”

He leapt up from his spot.

If they were just playing among themselves, he might’ve shrugged it off as something cool and moved on.

But somehow, it felt like their gazes were all fixed on him.

Do birds eat people?

If he remembered right, seagulls at the beach attacked people sometimes.

They were cunning—snatching shrimp crackers or outright robbing folks, it seemed.

If these were seagull-sized, that’d be one thing.

But a flock of birds this massive? That’d be a perfect recipe for sending someone to their doom.

The fortunate part was they seemed to be watching him without taking any action—yet.

Still, if he just stood there like an idiot, it’d be over. He had that gut feeling.

[Survival Instinct (Lv.1) is activated!]

He slowly shifted his feet.

He didn’t really have a destination.

Let’s just run.

Kkyak! Kkyaaaak!

Behind him, the flock of deranged crows screeched as if their throats would burst.

[Beginning of a Journey]

A world of romance and dreams!
You have entered a journey!
Set a destination…

Reward: Growth points…

“What is this?”

A forest he’d fled to.

It was a lush, verdant forest.

The refreshing scent of phytoncides and the greenery filling his vision made it feel like an arboretum.

The downside? It was dark, probably because the dense canopy blocked most sunlight.

As the saying goes, too much of anything isn’t good.

The ground was damp and soft underfoot, teetering on the edge of mud.

Anyway, a flock of giant birds would have a hard time chasing him here.

Finally catching his breath, he noticed something sparkling in the corner of his vision. Then a strange cluster of letters floated up.

He squinted and scanned it.

“Status window? Quest? System? Something like that?”

A small hobby of modern folks is reading novels.

He’d seen this kind of thing a lot there.

Novel possession, or game possession.

“But I didn’t do anything?”

He racked his brain.

It didn’t take long.

It was a long-awaited holiday, so he’d fallen asleep to rest.

No novels read, no games played.

No trigger.

And one more thing.

“Why can’t I see it?”

He couldn’t read the text.

It wasn’t dyslexia—his eyes physically couldn’t make it out.

He even stepped into a patch of sunlight to check if his vision was blurry, but it was the same.

The screen was fuzzy, like static noise, and no matter how he looked at it, the content was incomprehensible.

“Well, it’s probably nothing!”

He decided to ignore it.

What could he do if he couldn’t see it?

His nature was chill—don’t sweat the impossible, just move on.

If it were really important, this glitch wouldn’t have happened in the first place.

Guessing it was a status window or system was just that—a guess, based on secondhand experience.

It might not be.

Maybe he was hallucinating because he wasn’t fully awake.

Though that seemed unlikely.

His five senses were so sharp it didn’t feel like a dream.

If he were going to wake up, it would’ve happened when the crows startled him.

Slap!

“Ouch!”

He smacked his cheek just to be sure, and it hurt like hell.

A shriek slipped out involuntarily.

“Huh?”

A shriek.

He—no, she—blinked, rubbing her stinging cheek.

Come to think of it, why did her voice sound like that?

“Ah, ah. Aah.”

He wasn’t shameless enough to claim he’d had a deep, caveman bass that people called handsome just by hearing it.

But it’d been a decently manly low tone.

Now it was a high pitch.

She raised the notes step by step, and a clear soprano emerged.

Not a pretty boy’s voice, but a real woman’s.

She looked down.

A heavy lump of fat asserted its presence around her chest.

Her stomach was flat, her legs smooth.

At the same time, a long status window shimmered before her eyes.

“Lena.”

It was at the top, so it was probably her name.

The rest was blurry as usual, but that one detail was enough.

With this much evidence, she couldn’t deny reality.

Her gender had changed.

He’d become a woman.

“Well, it could happen.”

Lena brushed it off casually.

She’d opened her eyes in some bizarre world.

Compared to that, was a gender swap really so shocking?

It’s like when you buy a big item and get a bunch of freebies thrown in.

In that sense, the gender change was just a bonus that came with the world shift.

And Lena never cared much about freebies—she’d just give them away to people around her.

Oh? You’re a woman now? Cool.

That was the extent of her reaction.

“So what do I do now?”

This was a bigger deal to ponder than the gender change.

She’d been lying on a soft bed, then woke up in a strange place.

All she had was her new body and the clothes on her back.

No phone to kill time on community forums, no computer for games.

Wait, was this really the time to miss entertainment gadgets?

Food, clothing, and shelter were the real priorities.

It’s a forest.

A pristine, untouched natural forest, with no signs of human interference.

She’d run aimlessly to escape the crows, so she had no clue how she’d gotten here.

Not that she’d go back to crow central even if she did.

Anyway, she was stranded.

Lena vaguely recalled survival tips for being lost.

Don’t try to find your way back—you’ll just get more lost.

In other words, aiming for a city with people in this situation was a bad move.

“Okay.”

Lena stood, brushing dirt off her butt after squatting.

She stretched her joints and muscles with a groan.

“I have to move.”

Don’t try to find your way back.

That didn’t mean she couldn’t move to find food, right?

Lena started walking briskly.

It was the kind of logic someone who grabs stuff before reading the manual would have.

There’s a rule of 3-3-3.

It’s got variations—like the rule of love or brushing teeth—but the original is about survival.

A person dies after 3 minutes without air, 3 days without water, or 3 weeks without food.

So Lena decided to find water first.

Broadly speaking, it doubled as securing food.

Water teems with life—snails, freshwater clams, crayfish, crabs, even minnows.

Catch and eat those, and food’s sorted.

But finding water wasn’t easy.

The dense forest was a natural maze.

Everywhere she looked—plants, trees, the same scenery on repeat—made her wonder if she’d circled back.

For an amateur, finding water boiled down to dumb luck.

[Survival Instinct (Lv.1) is activated!]

But just as something sparkled, she got a feeling.

A hunch that something was that way.

She had no better options.

Trusting her gut, she went for it.

Swaaaa!

Lena found a stream.

Not a trickle between rocks, but a proper stream she could splash in.

Ugh, she was thirsty.

Sweat poured off her from all the walking, leaving her parched.

So she boldly dipped her mouth to the water and drank.

“Kya!”

An exclamation slipped out.

So cool!

The refreshing sensation sliding down her throat and spreading through her stomach was incredible.

She probably shouldn’t have.

Even if the stream looked clear, nature’s full of bacteria, viruses, and parasites that can mess you up.

But wasn’t this a time to take risks?

With nothing to her name, she had to dive in, stomachache be damned.

Luckily, the water was clean, tasted great, and caused no issues.

Water source: secured.

[Rule of Survival (1)]

Sometimes, it’s better to take a break than head straight to your destination.
You change your path and arrive at an unknown forest…

“Why are you so late?”

Lena waved a hand to shoo away the cryptic cluster of letters in her sight.

She couldn’t read it anyway.

She figured it was just belatedly confirming the water was drinkable.

It should’ve popped up sooner, then.

Normally, an item description would say it’s safe to drink, right?

When other people get isekai’d, they get quests, skills pop up fast, and they live on easy mode—why’s mine like this?

Lena clicked her tongue.

It was a sound the system—quietly doing its job unbeknownst to her—might find unfair.