Kaizen struggled wildly as he clawed at the rough hemp.
Even though he grabbed the noose with both hands, the knot was pulled so tight against his neck that he couldn't pry a single finger in to loosen the pressure.
He tried to use his raw strength to rip the rope apart, but he quickly realized that this body was completely pathetic.
It was a frail frame that hadn't even gone through an awakening yet.
"Dammit! A body that hasn't even awakened yet! What the hell! Krgg!"
He cursed while his vision began to blur. He was a level 45 warrior in his previous life, but right now he didn't have any of that vigor in this new body. It felt like moving through lead.
'Transmigrating is supposed to give me a cheat code or a boon! This is just a death sentence! Is this my starter quest or something!'
He didn't know the answer, but he needed to survive.
The oxygen in his lungs was long gone and the lack of air was making his head spin.
If he didn't get out of this noose right now, then he was going to die for the second time in less than ten minutes.
It was the most anticlimactic rebirth in history.
'NO! Not like this! I'm not wasting a second chance on a piece of rope! Never!'
With renewed vigor like the last push of a dying animal, he reached up and gripped the rope above his head.
He ignored the burning in his throat and mustered whatever pitiful strength this body possessed.
He lifted his legs higher and higher until his toes finally brushed the base of the ceiling fan.
'Just a little... krggh!'
He seethed through his gritted teeth and exerted one final burst of energy.
His feet hooked onto a fan blade and he hugged it like his life depended on it, which it actually did.
The pressure on his neck eased just enough for a tiny, painful gasp of air to reach his lungs.
He was still dangling from a fan in the middle of the night, but he was alive.
'Okay... step one is not dying. Step two is finding that whore Lilian and showing her what a real peanut looks like when it's buried in her throat.'
He let out a raspy, choked laugh that sounded more like a cough. He was weak and he was hanging from a ceiling, but the red glow in his eyes was back.
'I am a genius. Arthur would have just choked like a bitch but I am built different.'
He started to shimmy his way up, ready to unhook the noose and drop down like a cool action hero. He could almost feel the victory. He could almost hear the epic music playing in his head.
Creeeeak.
The sound was tiny, but in the dead of the night, it sounded like a scream. Kaizen froze. He looked up at the mounting bracket that connected the fan to the ceiling. It was wobbling.
'Wait. No. Not now.'
Creeak. Snap. Pop.
"Oh you have got to be—"
Before he could finish the thought, the entire ceiling fan gave up on life. The screws ripped out of the plaster with a violent crunch.
Instead of a graceful escape, Kaizen became a human anchor for a ten-pound piece of metal.
He plummeted.
CRASH!
He hit the floor hard, the fan landing right on top of his chest with a heavy thud.
The noose was still around his neck, but since the fan wasn't attached to the ceiling anymore, it was just a very stylish and heavy necklace.
He laid there staring at the ceiling, his ribs aching and the motor of the fan smelling like burnt dust.
'Seriously? You couldn't have fallen two minutes ago? You waited until I did all the work?!'
He coughed, the rope finally loosening as the weight of the fan shifted. He had spent his last ounce of "warrior spirit" climbing that thing, only for gravity to pull a prank on him at the finish line.
"Stupid... piece of... junk..."
He pushed the fan off his chest and rolled onto his side, gasping for air that didn't taste like hemp rope.
He was alive, but he felt like he had just gone three rounds with a golem. He reached up and finally slid the noose off his head, tossing it at the fallen fan with a look of pure hatred.
'This body is a joke. The furniture is a joke. Everything in this realm is a joke.'
He sat up and looked around the dark, cramped room. It was a dump. This definitely wasn't the luxury mansion he had lived in with his cheating wife.
"Well, at least I don't have to worry about the fan falling on me again. There's no fan left."
Kaizen spent a solid two minutes just wheezing on the floor, waiting for his heart to stop trying to jump out of his ribs.
This new body was so weak that even breathing felt like a heavy lift.
Once he stopped seeing double, he wobbled toward the full-body mirror in the corner of the room like a baby deer on ice.
In the soft blue moonlight, the reflection staring back was basically a walking corpse with a trial subscription to life.
He was tall, around 6'2'', but he was so skinny his ribs looked like a xylophone someone had forgotten to play.
He was pale enough to be a Victorian ghost, topped off with messy black hair and blood-red eyes that made him look like he'd been on a week-long bender in hell.
Then his eyes drifted lower. He saw the bulge under his cheap pants.
"..."
The silence was heavy. Suddenly, Lilian's shrill, mocking voice echoed in his head like a cursed record player.
"That is what a real man's cock feels like, not yours. Yours is just a little peanut that can't even give me a fake orgasm!"
"No money to buy me things, no dick to satisfy my needs!"
Kaizen sucked in a sharp, pained breath. No man deserved that.
So what if it was only 0.3 inches? He had the rhythm! He had the technique! He could piston that little peanut with the speed of a sewing machine until she reached... well, a very convincing fake orgasm.
'What happened to body positivity? Diversity is supposed to be a thing!'
Just because there were "cucumber farmers" out there didn't mean the peanut farmers couldn't live a good life with a beautiful wife. It was utter bullshit.
'I seriously hate those guys with big dongs, especially the author of the bumberhit novel The Harem System Belongs to the Villain. His is thicker than my actual thigh. That's not a body part, that's a structural hazard. It's totally unfair.'
He stood there, fuming at the injustice of it all.
He remembered a very legitimate, totally-not-made-up study that concluded people with peanuts actually satisfy women way better than guys dragging around a useless log of a cucumber.
It was pure science. Trust him. He knew the author of the study personally, and no, the author wasn't a member of the "Small Seed Society," and Kaizen wasn't either. They were just men of logic.
Kaizen took a deep breath, looked to the left, then to the right, and slowly gripped his waistband.
With a heart beating like a drum, he pulled the fabric back and gazed down into the abyss, praying for a miracle.
.
.
.
[A/N: Does your loved ones know you guys are a member of the prestigious club known as Small Seed Society?]
[Yes?]
[No?]