I liked watching the leaves sway outside the window.
It had been a few months since I arrived in this unfamiliar world. My tiny body continued to grow little by little.
And now, in our small wooden house, I had finally learned how to crawl around on my own.
You know what that means, right?
Yeah, yeah...
Time to explore.
Alright, little man. Let's do this.
One hand forward...
One leg to the side...
Thud.
Tsk... Damn it.
Trying to walk again was harder than I expected. This body was seriously terrible.
Alright. Time for another attempt.
...
..
.
Our wooden house was bigger than I had expected.
The kitchen and living area were combined into one room, while the bathroom reminded me of something straight out of an old rural village. There was also a bedroom where my mother slept, along with the man who was supposedly my father—someone I still hadn't had the chance to properly meet.
According to my mother, my father was a soldier.
That was why he rarely came home.
Huh?
Oh, right.
When I first opened my eyes in this world, there had been a man standing in the corner of the room, crying tears of happiness.
I hadn't paid much attention to him at the time.
I guess that man was probably my father.
"Elias..."
Oh, right. I almost forgot to mention it.
My new name in this world was Elias.
As my mother's voice grew closer, I turned toward the direction it was coming from.
"So there you are, little one... Come on. Before it gets too late, let's head to the market and prepare a surprise for your father tonight."
My mother gently picked me up and wrapped a piece of cloth around herself, securing me against her back.
For the first time since I had been born into this world, I finally had a chance to leave the house.
The door slowly opened.
Sunlight streamed through the doorway, completely illuminating the small wooden house that had been kept cool by the shadows.
When we stepped outside, the first thing that caught my attention wasn't the fact that the other houses looked like traditional village homes.
I'd already gotten used to that.
After all, I had apparently been reincarnated into what seemed to be some kind of medieval world.
But when I lifted my head and looked toward the sky...
What I saw didn't feel quite so ordinary.
Massive concrete walls stretched for what seemed like hundreds of meters.
And no matter which direction I turned my head...
They just kept going.
Wow...
I wonder what the view would look like from the top.
I knew it was still too early for me to understand anything about this world. I barely knew anything about it in the first place.
And yet...
For some reason, ever since we'd left the house, I couldn't shake the uneasy feeling growing inside me.
"Good morning, Mina."
"Good morning, Konrad."
Judging by the way the local shopkeepers greeted my mother, she seemed to be well-liked around the neighborhood.
Maybe my father's position as a soldier had something to do with that.
After shopping at a few different stores, we passed through the town square.
I'd be lying if I said the architecture didn't look surprisingly modern for a world that otherwise felt like the Middle Ages.
People walked along the streets with smiles on their faces.
It almost seemed as if everyone here genuinely enjoyed their lives.
Maybe I didn't end up in such a bad place after all.
Right?
"We're finally home... Getting old is really killing me."
Heh.
Don't exaggerate.
There was no way someone with a physique like that and such a young-looking face could possibly be considered old.
Once my mother gently placed me on the floor, I started crawling toward the bedroom.
I needed to calmly analyze everything I'd seen outside.
Meanwhile, my mother was preparing dinner.
The sounds coming from the kitchen made that pretty obvious.
Alright...
I hadn't been able to overhear much, but on our way home, I'd heard a few people talking to each other in worried voices.
I only caught a few words.
"Titans... Are they real?"
I had no idea what that meant.
But one thing was obvious.
The people saying those words had sweat trickling down the backs of their necks.
Whatever Titans were...
They were clearly afraid of them.
Maybe I'll find something in the books on my father's desk.
With that thought in mind, I made my way toward the desk.
But I regretted it almost immediately.
The chair and table were practically gigantic from my perspective.
There was no way my tiny body could climb them.
Maybe it was time to activate my secret weapon.
I was embarrassed to use it...
But surprisingly, it was incredibly effective.
"Ngaaaaa... N-naaaa..."
I was well aware of how terrible my voice sounded.
Just as I expected, my mother immediately came running when she heard me.
She first checked my body, worried that I might have hurt myself.
"Are you hungry, sweetheart? Or... did you need to use the bathroom?"
No, no...
Neither of those things had happened yet.
My actual target was the books on the desk.
I pointed toward the tabletop with my tiny, chubby hands.
My mother immediately understood what I wanted and smiled.
"Oh? Look at you. You're growing up already, huh?"
She slowly stood up and gathered all the books from the desk, placing them in front of me.
There were about four books in total.
"Sweetheart, these belong to your father. Please be careful with them, okay?"
Yes, yes...
Now, you can go back to the kitchen. I want to be alone here.
Realizing how interested I was in the books, my mother quietly left the room and returned to the kitchen.
Alright.
First book.
"..."
Maybe I'd find something in the second one.
I slowly opened the cover and began looking through the pages.
"..."
Ah, shit.
Does nobody use picture books in this era?
I could understand the spoken language of this world somehow, but I couldn't read a single word.
I'd had such high hopes.
Until evening, I sat there flipping through books filled with writing I couldn't understand.
I didn't even realize how quickly the time had passed until I heard the sound of the front door opening.
"Sweetheart, I'm home."
My father had come home.
He was still wearing his military uniform. His light-brown jacket had two rose-like insignias embroidered onto it.
Judging by his face, he'd clearly had an exhausting day.
But the moment my father noticed me, the stern expression on his face disappeared.
In its place was the expression of an absolute idiot.
"Oh, oh... Look who we have here."
"Sweetheart, go change first. You can play with Elias afterward."
"Alright, alright. But I'm definitely smelling something delicious. Don't tell me that's what I think it is."
Heh.
My father was right.
For a while now, I'd been smelling something delicious coming from the kitchen.
"I don't know... Maybe..."
...
It was a happy family dinner, followed by a delicious dessert.
Since it was already evening, candles surrounded the table, casting a warm glow across the room.
While my mother and father talked to each other for a while, I tried to listen to their conversation.
But eventually, my eyelids began to grow heavy.
Before I even realized it...
My eyes closed.
And my tiny body drifted into sleep.