Warm sunlight suddenly burst into my world.
These rays of sunlight seeped relentlessly through the cracked eggshell beneath me, as if they were the first morning light shining into a room, playfully wrapping around my curled-up body.
“Mmm…“
Because I was a little unused to the suddenly bright world, I instinctively reached out to cover my eyes, but this motion worsened the cracks in the eggshell around my body.
With a series of “crunch, crunch” sounds like chocolate bars being chewed, the surrounding eggshell began to fall away along the break beneath me, releasing waves of an enticing milky fragrance.
‘Huh?’
This fragrance instantly made me ravenous. I barely opened my eyes, and the thought of ‘I want to take a bite of the eggshell’ couldn’t help but pop into my mind.
‘No, this is not the time to think about that!’
As my eyelids slowly opened, the light of the blurry outside world continuously stimulated my optic nerves through my retinas.
My originally hazy consciousness slowly recovered, and after a brief moment of thought, I roughly understood my current situation.
I… seemed to have transmigrated into some unknown world, just like the protagonists in the novels I had written.
After transmigrating, I had stayed inside a strange egg for a very, very long time.
During that time, wrapped in the eggshell, I could occasionally hear all kinds of sounds. There should have been someone speaking near my “egg.”
Then, not long ago, a creature or monster that the outside voices called a “Shadow Phantom” took me away together with the egg and dumped me here.
“Phew–“
Thinking of this, I instinctively took a breath.
Just like a baby’s first breath, as air entered my nose, I couldn’t help but let out a somewhat cute “nnh nnh” sound.
Immediately after, a scent carried by the summer monsoon and mixed with soft soil and green grass rushed through my nose into my lungs, instantly clearing my mind even more.
I opened my eyes with all my strength.
Before me, an inverted oval smooth wall was less than 5 centimeters away.
A faint crack could be seen spreading across it, and through the gap, I could barely see the outside world in two colors: sky blue and leaf green.
I could smell the scent of grass and soil coming from the broken eggshell beneath my feet, mixed with a small amount of the muddy odor unique to a little stream.
My ears could hear the “gurgle, gurgle” of water flowing over pebbles and grass not far away.
Besides that, judging from the intensity and angle of the sunlight shining on the eggshell, the time should be morning, close to noon.
As I had guessed, at this moment I must have been dumped by that “Shadow Phantom” near a little stream.
The fall had cracked the eggshell, and the air and sunlight pouring in from the outside world had awakened me from my swaddled state.
‘In other words, if I don’t act quickly… I might be in danger.’
Thinking of this, I almost instinctively tried to stand up.
However, I forgot one important thing: the space inside the egg wrapping around me was only large enough for me to curl up in.
If I forcibly tried to stand, then…
“Crack–“
With an impact, my head hit the eggshell above me.
The hole at my feet where the eggshell had broken stretched a little wider, but it was not enough to make the whole eggshell split open.
I lost my balance and sat back down with a “plop.“
Immediately after, perhaps because I was restless inside the eggshell, the egg that should have been standing upright lost its balance because of my movement and tipped backward–
“Gurgle, gurgle…”
The world began to spin continuously.
“Gurgle, gurgle, gurgle…”
The egg, having lost its balance, rolled backward with me inside it.
After spinning who knows how many times, it hit something with a “crack” and stopped.
Uuu…
‘Idiot.’
‘I really am an idiot… I knew I was inside the eggshell, so why did I move around so much…’
After resting a little inside the eggshell and recovering some strength, I turned my gaze toward the opening in the cracked eggshell.
I could clearly see the black soil outside and some tender grass sprouts.
Fortunately, I rolled around and did not end up somewhere strange. That was a blessing in misfortune.
‘By the way, why is my body…’
While I observed the outside world through the crack in the eggshell, my gaze was also drawn to my own body in my field of view.
My fair, smooth skin was so delicate that it seemed it could be broken by a breath, clean and clear like a pearl on a shell in a limpid stream.
My slender legs had a little baby fat, and my small feet looked like ornaments carved from snowy white jade.
I tried to control those feet and moved them a little.
In my field of view, the soft soles and ten toes also moved according to my intention.
‘This is… my body?’
Inside the eggshell, I shifted back a little and raised both hands before my eyes.
My delicate hands had skin as smooth as cream, making me feel as if I were looking at a flawless work of art.
Then my gaze moved slightly downward and landed on my chest.
Although my body had only just begun to develop, everything about it clearly belonged to that of a young girl.
Below my chest was my fair, slightly rounded belly, and further down was…
Just as I saw the part that confirmed my body’s sex, the long hair behind me suddenly cascaded down like a waterfall.
A few strands drifted past my ears, while others fell along my back and neck.
‘White?’
After nearly half a minute of daze, I adjusted my sitting posture and briefly summarized the condition of my body.
If nothing unexpected had happened, I must have transmigrated into a long-haired little girl around 12 years old whose body had just begun to develop.
Her hair was white and extremely long. If she stood up, it would probably cover most of her back.
‘No way…’
After confirming this, I suddenly felt lost.
‘I… I was a man nearing 30, and I suddenly became a little girl. This… I… what should I do…’
Moreover, about 10 minutes had passed since this egg of mine was dumped here.
In those 10 minutes, forget people–there wasn’t even any sound around like a car horn or an airplane that symbolized modern society.
This meant I was either in an Otherworld outside Earth, or I had been dumped somewhere far from towns, completely deserted.
‘If it is the former, in an Otherworld, a little girl around 10 years old, very hungry, so weak that she cannot even break free from the eggshell wrapping her body, if she runs into a wild beast or something…’
“…”
I did not know whether those earlier restless movements had exhausted my strength, but thinking of this, I suddenly felt my body go limp and my consciousness blur.
I could no longer maintain my half-crouching, half-sitting posture and slowly leaned against the eggshell behind me.
Immediately after, a strong wave of drowsiness struck, and I lowered my head.
With a vague unease, I slowly closed my eyes…
“…”
Before I lost consciousness, a gentle voice seemed to reach my ears–
“Child of the Otherworld, welcome to Lumina.”
“In the time to come, please go with her to seek the Teresia that belongs to you both.”
“I hope you can find the long-cherished wish that belongs to each other.”
“…”
…
[Erlinni Isha’s Notes]—
There are only girls in Lumina.
In Lumina, almost all girls are born from “eggs.”
In Lumina, the process by which new children are born is different from that of Earth.
When two girls form a Couple’s Manor Bond, they can obtain special seeds from the Spirit Tree that carry their respective genetic information.
These seeds are planted together and eventually develop into a special space where a new “egg” is formed.
The egg can hatch naturally over time, or the parents can help care for it and accelerate the hatching process.
Therefore, the act of caring for an egg until it hatches is known as “Egg Incubation.”
In other words, although the girls of Lumina possess the same basic biological structures as girls of Earth, their reproduction is not directly connected to ordinary human reproductive processes.
At present, Lumina’s scientific research materials still cannot explain the logic and principles behind this unusual reproductive system.
Or perhaps everyone has simply grown accustomed to this method of bringing children into the world.
After all, Lumina is originally a world composed of countless “dreams.”
Perhaps everyone in Lumina is itself a kind of dreamed being?
PS: Generally, the weaker one among the two girls is responsible for caring for the egg during the incubation period.
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