Chapter №1 – To Our Beautiful Montenegro?

BANG!

“Milye Burasika! Leebliye’ya! See en leebliye’ya!”

…God, is that you?

Crash, crackle!

…God’s speaking a weird language that I can’t get. It sounds vaguely Hungarian, must be Hungarian if it sounds like gibberish. God, why are you Hungarian?

Boris watched as a woman, clearly scared from him, ran out of the room and caused quite the mess. A vase had been shattered, along with a few porcelain cups that sat next to the bed. He squinted his eyes as the morning sun shone down through the thin curtains. The room was pretty clean, pristine, heavenly even, when Boris thought more about it however, it seemed unlikely that he was currently in Heaven. Putting his sins aside, like having murdered one or two people during the war which he had to admit the Lord probably wouldn’t approve of, Heaven probably didn’t have curtains or screaming people.

Despite probably not being in Heaven however, Boris did feel like he was in there. The bed was soft, softer than anything he had experienced, His body, having been beaten down by a long period of fighting, seemed like it had recovered instantly. How long had he been out for? Quite long if his body had managed to recover fully, he imagined. He felt lighter, younger, yet he didn’t feel energetic. Being energetic was against Boris’ nature. He’d rather nap the day away if he could, not being bothered with the horrifying events leading to his death which he could now barely remember.

“See en fis yonden, artsor!”

“Ene anshenle, mösa eadhen!”

Another round of gibberish followed outside the door, and soon Boris saw the woman enter the room again, along with a man. The woman had an outfit that was a recognizable sight to him from the low-brow entertainment of the lustful kind provided to the soldiers: a frilly cap, an apron with a dark dress underneath it and some pristine white cuffs. It was the quintessential maid, plain-looking with no other discernable features to be noted about her. The man was another archetype, an older bloke in a green frock coat who had a stethoscope wrapped around his neck. His beard looked as if it had been snowed on, the same comment could be made about his hair if he had any remaining.

The older man approached Boris with his stethoscope raised up high towards Boris’ chest. Boris instinctively rolled his shirt up, a simple white tunic which he had never seen before, and let the cold metal of the device touch his heart. The cold touch of the stethoscope didn’t feel pleasant, but it beat having a case of undiagnosed tuberculosis or any other lung disease. The doctor calmy listened to the stethoscope, then looked back at the maid. He shrugged at the woman who was looking at him with terrified eyes, then looked back at Boris and said “Toye er sto mi? Toy’da vefben-een?”

Of course, Boris understood none of that sentence, so all he could reply with was a faint “Ne?” His reply didn’t seem sufficient, so the doctor stated the same sentence a few more times before seemingly giving up. “Savayla!” With that, he took Boris by the hand and got him off the bed. Boris wanted to resist, but the old doctor was somehow much stronger than him. He ended up being raised up by the old doctor, and put on the floor.

Then Boris noticed something much odder. He was short, very short. He could barely reach the waists of the others in the room. My legs were blown off if I remember correctly, maybe that’s it? However, there was one tiny little issue with that line of thought: Nope, then I wouldn’t be walking if my legs were completely missing… This was quite the interesting situation to be in, to say the least. Boris took a few steps around the room, observing his surroundings. It was quite the stuffy room, filled with bits of odd junk. A table there, a tablecloth over there, another tablecloth there… and a bed tucked away in the corner right under the windows leading outside. The outside looked quite white, clearly it was still winter so Boris hadn’t slept that much.

While Boris was making his rounds, the doctor and the maid had seemingly been arguing about him. The maid was pointing at Boris while frantically telling the doctor something, and the doctor didn’t seem too concerned with what she was telling. Boris himself was curious, considering how his height had changed, how he was looking at the moment. Considering how the artillery shell had made him fly up, he guessed that his handsome face might not be as intact as it once. Thankfully, there was a convenient mirror in the room which would help him solve his problems…

“What?”

…or it’d only make his problems worse.

Gone was the old Boris, replaced with a visage that definitely didn’t fit a thirtysomething like him. He was much shorter along with being much younger, somewhere before the teens if he could hazard a guess. Not to mention the fact that he was not inhabiting a male body anymore, which was the most shocking part. Now Boris saw a little girl stare back at him through the mirror, not a pleasing sight in the slightest for the poor man. He patted his head, his shoulders, his sides, only to confirm the fact that Boris didn’t look much like a Boris anymore.

Unlike how a situation like the one above is portrayed, being transported to a whole another body isn’t something that one gets over with in the first half of chapter one. Boris was Boris, a man who had lived for more than thirty years, not a girl who hadn’t even entered her teens. He was distressed, to say the least. He felt disgust at the sight presented to him in front of the window, something way different than what he thought he should be… If he could, Boris would rather be in his old body and dying in the trenches rather than be in comfort here. Everything felt unreal. Boris wished he had just died like normal. This wasn’t him. This…

Thud!

…was a bit overwhelming. Boris collapsed on the floor, and lost all sense of conscious.

…

…where am I?

Such a question popped up into Boris as he lapsed back into being conscious. He was on the bed again. Unfortunately, he hadn’t woken up from his nightmare. This was reality, despite Boris flinching himself several times to refute that fact.

At least the bed is nice…Boris crawled under the sheets again, and began doing the only thing he could reasonably do: think while lying in bed. The first question that popped up into his bed seemed reasonable: where was he? Obviously, it was somewhere foreign considering he didn’t get what his visitors were speaking. Probably Hungary, where Austro-Hungarian soldiers had captured and taken him, which explained the language which sounded like complete gibberish to a Slav like him. There wasn’t any other explanation he could find, ones that were not completely far-fetched at the moment.

Now that Boris had established that he was probably in Hungary, then the question had come to “what”, or “what happened to me?”. Obviously, Boris wasn’t in his old body anymore. His old body, as far as he could faintly remember, must have been gravely wounded. Boris was a man of the 20thcentury, one who had come across a few works of science-fiction now and then. He had read of mad science experiments, such as that of Dr. Frankenstein, and his mind went to those when he thought of how he might be in this situation. Perhaps some mad scientist had taken the brain from his damaged body and transferred it over to another one? That’d explain why the doctor and the maid were so surprised at him getting up. I just wish they had selected a better body for their mad science experiment… Of course, that begged he question:

Who was she?Suddenly, a flood of memories came back to Boris. Very vague memories, without much usable context. Memories not of his own, but of the body he inhabited. There was her mother, a very broken-down house, a big European city of some sort… and most of the memories didn’t make any further sense because Boris didn’t know Hungarian (or whatever the language was). It would have been convenient for him to suddenly get knowledge of the local language but alas, Boris had gotten the short end of the isekai stick which he didn’t even know about. Sure, he had been born after Alice in Wonderland (the first modern isekai), but that book was very far away from the tropes he’d have to be ready for.

My head hurts. Enough thinking for today.Boris had somewhat calmed down. Thinking further, worrying about his current situation further wouldn’t help him much. He couldn’t ask for help or context from the locals, nor could he think about escaping from hostile Hungarian lands and making it back to Montenegro. At least this situation was less stressful than war, and the bed had begun looking more enticing to him by the second. Boris climbed up to the bed and tucked himself in once more, His initial shock had subsided. Sure, he wasn’t too enthused by having lost his old body, but he wouldn’t care too much if he was to receive such premium care by his mad scientist captors. Peace would come eventually, and Boris would probably be repatriated back home whether or not Montenegro was independent or under Habsburg rule. Perhaps he could ask the mad scientist to give him a new body through repeating the same process again.

For now, Boris closed the lids of his eyes once more. Thankfully, his laidback attitude and desire to rest kept his sanity in check while he drifted into dreamland once more…

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