The last thing Alex remembered was the smell of ozone and the sudden, frantic realization that his umbrella was a very bad idea.
One moment, he was a sixteen-year-old boy walking home from school through a summer drizzle; the next, a blinding pillar of white light turned the world into a silent, vibrating void. There was no pain—just a sensation of being unplugged from a wall socket.
"Oops," a voice echoed. It was melodic, echoing like a harp string plucked in a cathedral, but it carried a distinct note of 'I just dropped my phone in the toilet.'
Alex opened his eyes—or rather, the concept of eyes. He was floating in a realm of shimmering lavender clouds. Standing before him was a woman so radiant she made the sun look like a dim flashlight. She wore a crown of woven starlight and a look of deep, profound embarrassment.
"You're Alex, right?" she asked, nervously twisting a strand of golden hair. "I am the Goddess of Celestial Logistics. And, look, I'm going to be real with you: that lightning bolt was meant for a very specific, very evil warlock three towns over. My hand slipped."
Alex blinked. "So... I'm dead because of a cosmic typo?"
"Technically, yes," she winced. "But I can fix this! I can't send you back—the paperwork for a 'Return to Sender' on a soul is a nightmare—but I can offer you a fresh start. A peaceful world. No Demon Kings to slay, no 'System' windows popping up in your face, and absolutely zero glitches. Just a life. A long, happy one."
"Peaceful sounds good," Alex admitted, still processing the fact that he was currently a ghost.
"Great! I've already picked out a perfect spot. It's a bit... different from your old world, but I think you'll find it quite charming. Enjoy your second chance!"
Before Alex could ask what "different" meant, the Goddess snapped her fingers.
The New View
The first thing Alex noticed was the weight. Or lack of it.
He was lying on a bed of incredibly soft moss. The air smelled of clover and wild honey. He sat up, but his center of gravity felt completely wrong. He felt... tiny.
He reached up to rub his eyes, but his hand—small, pale, and delicate—brushed against something long and velvet-soft on top of his head. He froze. He tugged.
"Ouch!"
A sharp, twitchy sensation shot from the top of his head down to his spine. He reached up with both hands and felt two long, furry appendages. They were tall, sensitive, and currently drooping forward in front of his face.
Ears. I have bunny ears.
Panicking, he looked down. Gone were the jeans and sneakers. In their place was a simple, oversized linen tunic that draped over a body that was significantly smaller than his sixteen-year-old frame. He looked about thirteen. His skin was porcelain-smooth, and his hair—now a soft, snowy white—fell in messy tufts around his face.
He spotted his reflection in a nearby crystalline pond. A pair of wide, startled ruby-red eyes stared back. He wasn't just a bunny girl; he was, by all objective measures, ridiculously cute. And, judging by the way his knees knocked together when he tried to stand, he was also incredibly shy.
He tried to focus on the "mana" the Goddess had mentioned. He felt a tiny, flickering spark in his chest—like a single candle in a dark room. It wasn't much, but it was there.
"Okay," he whispered, his voice coming out as a soft, melodic squeak. "No Demon King. No glitches. Just... me. And these ears."
The forest around him was vibrant, filled with giant flowers and distant laughter. As he stepped out from under the shade of a Great Oak, he realized the Goddess hadn't been kidding about the "all-woman" part. In the distance, a group of tall, armored women on horseback were patrolling the path, their laughter carrying on the wind.
Alex—now a tiny, twitchy-eared girl in a world of giants—shrank back behind a tree, his heart racing. This was going to be a very long chapter.