"You and I are only mortals, born into this earthly world.
We toil and rush about all day, never a moment to spare.
Since we are not immortals, stray desires are only natural.
Set morality aside, and put profit front and center."
A voice that was not unpleasant—at least it was not tone-deaf—echoed inside a little electric car. The driver entertained himself as he watched the streets outside beneath the dim streetlights.
Have you ever seen the city at one in the morning? I get to see it every day after work, the singer thought.
He had assumed he would spend his whole life as a corporate workhorse. But as he drove through an intersection, a blinding fog light suddenly appeared on his left.
Then came a low, bellowing horn, like the call of an ox, loud enough to nearly burst his eardrums.
The light and deafening noise kept the driver from immediately registering what was happening. He simply maintained his driving posture and turned his head to look to his left.
Ah, it's the transmigrator's trusty tool. A big truck.
By the time he realized what was coming at him, the tremendous impact struck like a firing pin hitting a shell's primer. The battery beneath the little electric car instantly exploded in a roaring shower of sparks.
The truck did not stop. They were far out beyond the outskirts, after all. There was not a single functioning surveillance camera nearby, nor any other cars on the road. Looking for dashcam footage would have been pointless.
By the time the fire department arrived after receiving the call, photographs of the crash scene had already gone viral online.
The fire had long since gone out. A car burned down to its frame sat alone on the road.
At the driver's seat, a faint mark unlike the rest could still be seen—the last proof that a certain corporate workhorse had ever existed in this world.
The only person who missed him was his boss. Someone's unexplained absence over the next few days had left work undone and responsibilities unhanded over, sending the team leader into a rage.
Eventually, a termination notice was mailed to an empty home with thirty years left on its mortgage. A few months later, the people the bank sent to repossess the property tossed it into the trash.
No one cared about the homeowner who had vanished.
... Transmigration in progress ...
When the happy corporate workhorse opened his eyes again, he did not see his familiar driver's seat. There was no truck outside the window, nor any blinding lights. Instead...
All right, even the window is different.
He felt as though he were sitting in a massage chair, tightly enclosed on both sides and around his back. Directly in front of him was an oval, slightly convex transparent shield—the only window through which he could see outside.
Turning his head was difficult, but his eyes still moved. He glanced from side to side. Within his limited field of vision, he seemed to be inside an enclosed space.
Beyond the viewing window lay pitch-black darkness dotted with stars.
Is it nighttime?
Then a planet with rings of rocky debris swept past the window, its unimaginably enormous bulk visible for only an instant.
This... you don't see things like that in the night sky. That belongs in a planetarium or a movie.
He carefully studied the view outside, watching the enormous celestial bodies that occasionally swept past, along with a dazzling light in the distance... Oh, that reminded the trapped passenger of what felt like a very recent event: the fog lights on the front of that truck.
He checked his limbs. Although he seemed to be wedged inside a padded container, he could at least still move. It was just very difficult.
With some effort, he worked his right hand free and raised it before his eyes. This clearly was not his arm—or, more precisely, it clearly was not the arm of someone his age.
It was chubby and short, with skin so smooth it had an oily sheen. There was no doubt how soft and springy it must have been.
Such extreme health, a condition that could even be called perfect, would never be found on a chronically sleep-deprived corporate workhorse. Never mind the proportions, which did not belong to an adult.
So have I been reincarnated? Transmigrated? Or taken over a dead body?
But there are no extra memories in my head. I don't even know what's happening to me right now.
Judging by the view outside, however, this was neither some bizarre Quantum Realm nor a strange, magnificent metaphysical world. Most likely, he was somewhere in outer space.
He had no way of figuring out where. If this really was outer space, the universe was so vast that finding himself in any obscure corner of it would hardly be surprising.
He watched another enormous celestial body pass the viewing window. With its alternating brown and white bands and its eye-like Great Red Spot, it looked remarkably like the pictures of Jupiter he remembered.
So there's a good chance I'm in the Solar System?
Then the ringed planet I saw earlier might have been Saturn?
Going by that order, I'm probably flying straight toward Earth... or the sun!
All right. There was nothing resembling a rudder or controller anywhere he could see. He could not even find a control panel. He therefore had no way of knowing whether the thing he was riding in could steer itself or had simply been caught in the sun's gravitational pull.
If it's the former, I'm going home. If it's the latter, I'm going to the great beyond...
I just transmigrated, and now I'm heading straight to my death? No, maybe this is a sci-fi version of the scenery along Naihe Bridge.
In any case, as a worker who fully qualified as a corporate workhorse, he gave up trying to devise a way to save himself. The coffin had not been nailed shut yet, anyway. Worrying about it now was pointless.
Besides, he had already checked his surroundings. There were no obvious controls, nor much room to move. He seemed to be inside some kind of spacecraft, perhaps an escape pod.
He had no idea what it looked like outside, but the interior hardly felt high-tech.
... Could this be like those sci-fi movies and shows where they put dead people in coffins and throw them into outer space? Just as the Age of Sail had burials at sea, the space age has burials in space?
Did I get the chance to take over because this body's original owner died?
... Or am I actually a Saiyan, stuffed into a one-person space capsule and sent to a backward planet to conquer it?
Unfortunately, he could not tell whether he had a tail. With his body wrapped tightly in the seat, he could not reach around to check, either.
Thinking of how Akira Toriyama had written the protagonist of Dragon Ball, he could not help picking it apart.
Sure, dismissing Earth's fighting strength and suggesting that even a baby could conquer it was meant to highlight the gulf between Saiyans and Earthlings.
But if they sent a baby who could not even understand what was happening, would he know he was supposed to conquer anything? A pacifier might be enough to take care of him.
The protagonist of the Dragon Ball manga had not been subdued with a pacifier, but it was close enough.
A premise with that many holes could only have been a product of its era. Even ten years later, let alone in the new century, nobody would have come up with sending a baby to conquer the world.
It was like a demon king sending his daughter to deal with the hero's party. Delivering pussy from a thousand miles away like that was practically setting a flag for his daughter to turn around and assassinate him.
Do they really think every woman is Kicho, so lovestruck once she gets married that she's ready to turn around and stab her own family in the back?!
No! Most women are more like Empress Lü, wanting to turn the Liu family's empire into the Lü family's empire. Their guiding principle is, "What's yours is mine, and what's mine is still mine!"
Amid all his snark, the passenger in the escape pod—or little spaceship—spotted half of a blue planet through the viewing window. It was growing larger and larger.
He called it half a planet because the other half was dark, facing away from the sun. Still, vast expanses of artificial lights shone on that dark half, making it less dark.
Hmm, looks like they've entered the technological age. At least I won't have to worry about landing among primitive people who eat raw flesh, or medieval folk who tie people to stakes and burn them at the slightest provocation.
The craft circled Earth once, passing quite a few satellites in high orbit along the way. Amid his endless mental griping, its passenger forgot to investigate his own origins and simply watched the little spaceship plunge headfirst into the atmosphere.
The sparks ignited by intense friction turned the view outside completely red, but the cabin remained comfortable. Even the shaking so often shown in movies seemed nonexistent. Naturally, he felt no changes in g-force, either.
That alone told him that the thing he was riding in was more technologically advanced than the Earth he had once lived on. Otherwise, without a spacesuit, he would have been battered to death.
But that thought was immediately driven from his mind. This thing did not land with some sophisticated, steady vertical descent. It picked a patch of ground and plowed straight through it!
... All right, that was a pretty brutal landing, but I couldn't feel any of it inside. With that kind of disconnect, it's hard to judge whether this thing's technology is advanced or primitive.
Or maybe one of my guesses was right. This isn't a spaceship at all. It's an escape pod, or a space coffin, or something like that.
Then what the hell am I?
Hmm, am I about to see a classic scene? A bunch of apes with obvious signs of evolution dragging me out of this space coffin!
Have I ended up on a future Earth where apes have risen and humanity has fallen?
Fortunately, however, the scene he feared never materialized.
Before long, a group of modern people arrived, opened the hatch, and pulled him out of the mysterious spacecraft.
It was nighttime at the landing site, and heavy snow drifted through the air. A group of burly men in thick white coats jabbered away in Russian.
He had just been about to greet them with, "Bonjour, tovarishch," but all that came out was a wailing cry.
Although he was crying, once he was free of the padding, he could finally confirm his condition. With his short, stubby limbs, he was no underdeveloped dwarf. He was an actual baby.
And this damned weather is freezing...