"Ah. Nine hundred and ninety-seven is awake already. And he even rolled over. Incredible," she said in a cold, utterly indifferent tone, as if she were commenting on the weather.
The old woman approached me slowly.
And in the meantime, I was screaming in my head:
What in the actual hell is this?!
Why do I understand her speech when it doesn't sound like any language I know?
Why did she call me a number—are those names here?
And why is she looking at me like that?!
I tried not to panic, but my success rate was roughly zero. Only one thought tore through my skull:
Please let this not be a world where you have to learn something… other than magic. If magic even exists here.
I noticed she was holding a pacifier filled with something that looked like milk. Milk that smelled extremely suspicious.
She came closer, picked me up—pretty roughly, by the way—flipped me over, and shoved the pacifier into my mouth without asking my opinion. I decided that, in my situation, resisting was not a winning strategy.
The milk was warm and, surprisingly, delicious. It explained nothing, though—neither the world, nor my situation, nor why I apparently had a number instead of a name.
When I drained it down to the last drop…
Meanwhile, the old woman yanked the pacifier out, looked me over, and gave a faint smile.
"Interesting… I wonder if they'll let you go into potions… or if you'll manage to wriggle out of it," she whispered.
Then she turned and left with soft, quiet steps.
I woke up again. Looks like the milk simply knocked me out.
I looked around as much as my body allowed. Nothing had changed. The same brick walls. The same door. The same wire-free lamp. Everything was stable.
Alright. If I'm small, then in theory I've got time. I need to act strategically.
A plan.
Step one: learn to crawl properly.
Step two: walk.
Step three: talk.
Step four: don't look too weird.
The last one was the hardest.
I didn't even know what "normal" meant here. What's the average intelligence? How do children behave? What if, at three months, kids here already solve differential equations, and I'm sitting there like: "Goo-goo"?
No. Calm down. Panic is the enemy of productivity.
I'll behave like a simply smart child. One who develops early, but without going full fanatic. Doesn't cry for no reason. Looks… thoughtful.
By the way, when I didn't cry after waking up, the old woman didn't react at all. So it's not an anomaly. Good. That's already a plus.
Looks like she's my nanny.
And then it hit me.
Wait.
What plans? What strategy? I don't even have basic coordination.
I mentally smacked myself in the back of the head.
I need to start with the fundamentals: controlling the body. Movement control. Balance. At the very least, learning to move my hand where I want it to go, rather than where fate decides.
Perfect.
My grand path to power begins with… rollover drills.
If my former colleagues ever find out, they'll be deeply disappointed.
Though no. They're probably dead already.
A wonderful start to a new life.
The next… roughly a month.
I determined that empirically. The nanny came in three times a day. The interval was about eight hours. I just counted feedings and divided "by three."
Yes. My first serious intellectual activity in this new world was counting my own snacks.
The month was… boring.
Most of the time I slept. Baby biology apparently believes brain development is more important than my strategic plans. But every time I sank into that wonderful dreamworld, the door would open, and that old hag would wake me up to feed me.
"Out of paradise—back to reality," I grumbled silently.
To be fair, without food I wouldn't last long. So I hate her, but I respect her.
Over that month, I trained diligently.
My coordination slowly improved. I was still nowhere near my previous version of myself, but at least my arms had stopped living independent lives. Give it another month, and I should be able to control this body properly.
Crawling was worse.
With coordination this weak, even rolling onto my stomach was a mini-battle. But compared to day one, the progress was obvious. Back then I was a flipped-over beetle. Now I was a flipped-over beetle with ambition.
In a month or two, I should be able to crawl normally.
Another two months passed.
Nothing in the room changed. Bricks stayed put. The wire-free lamp stayed put. The door stayed put. Feeding schedule—also unchanged. Stability is a sign of either order… or an experiment.
I'd learned to crawl. Probably.
The problem was that there wasn't much space in the crib. So I couldn't claim it with full confidence. You can't unlock your potential inside four walls. Almost a philosophical thought.
My coordination was now almost back to my previous self. My hands obeyed. My head turned where I wanted. Progress, plain as day.
And still, I was horribly bored.
I wanted to start talking. But I quickly realized the problem: how do you speak a language you don't know? I can't just open my mouth and accidentally produce correct grammar.
So that left something else.
Train the brain.
While I'm a child, neuroplasticity should be at its peak. If they shoved me back into the starter version of a body, I should squeeze the maximum out of it.
That shouldn't be hard… right?
I know plenty of exercises. For example: mentally drawing a circle with one hand and a square with the other. Or imagining complex objects and rotating them in my mind. Or counting while simultaneously visualizing geometric shapes.
The irony, of course, is that I'm voluntarily training my brain in a world that may force me to learn something for the rest of my life.