PROLOGUE

I was a mindless zombie even when I was alive on Earth. 

Most of the people have unsatisfying lives. It wasn’t different for me, I was an average nobody.

Sure, I used to ask myself a lot of questions when I was in college. The usual ones, actually. What do I like to do? What kind of life do I want to have? What are my values? What is my purpose? Is there a god out there? What happens after death? Does free will exist or is it just an illusion? 

My wonderful brain really liked to have existential crises everyday at the time, so I tried to turn it off. For a while, I did it in a productive way for society. Became a top-grades student, having big dreams for myself. I wanted to be someone important at the time, maybe a politician or a diplomat. Feeling special, better than others, maybe would have shaped a life worth living, and being busy made me forget my tendency to ask questions. I even found noble causes that made my ambition less egotistical and more heroic. Saving the world sounded cool, right? 

Of course, something went wrong. It always does.

The problem was, once again, my brain asking new questions. Ugly questions, even worse than the old ones. 

Will we make it, as human kind? Are we dooming ourselves? Will I ever grow old? Are we going to destroy Earth? 

I think you're starting to understand, ecoanxiety hit me like a truck. Time to turn off the brain again. This time I had a better answer. 

Addiction.

My drug of choice was reading Isekai novels.

Most of the time, they were low-quality stories, so clichè and badly written, but there was something incredibly comforting about their protagonists. Underdogs, Hikikomori, nerds, otaku, dying on Earth and returning back to life, conquering their places in new worlds, gaining skills, power and love and saving the world. Why couldn't I just be like them? They changed, they had adventurous lives, they weren’t stuck in a never ending cycle of emptiness, mediocrity and loneliness.  

Isekai were better than anything, better than study, better than having relationships, or friendships, better than working. Better than living.

That’s how, in my early twenties, I ended up as a college drop-out. I was just a lonely cleaning lady, living day by day. 

Waking-up, going to work, daydreaming about the next novel, getting home and reading it until late. No more questions, no more answers. Everyday was exactly the same.

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“Be careful of what you desire because you might obtain it” they say. It was true for me.

My deepest desire happened. I died on Earth, I don’t even remember how, maybe it was a good old Truck-kun, and, when I woke up, I was in a new world. My new Isekai life turned out to be different from the novels I used to read, though.

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I wasn’t reborn in a comfy bed as a noble villainess. I woke up in a room of a mortuary, and I wasn’t reborn at all. The cold feeling of the table I was lying down, the revolting smell of rottenness, the stickiness of the blood, I remember all of it. 

A crooked billboard was hanging from the ceiling. The smiling, cartoon skeleton painted on it was winking at me. “Welcome to Undead City, new beautiful citizens!” said the tagline. 

My head hurt like hell and, when I touched it, I realized there were thick nails coming out of my temples. 

I slowly lifted my arms, they felt so heavy, and I looked at the scars running on the surface of my patched skin. I sat, shivering, shattering pain in my bones.

I wasn’t alone in the room. There were other bodies on the tables, some of them were slowly moving, some of them groaning, some of them covered in bandages. 

It was difficult to understand who was alive and who was dead. I couldn’t even understand that regarding myself. 

I suddenly felt the urge to throw up, but my stomach, and I wondered if I still had a stomach, was empty. To my right, there were huge surgical instruments hanging on the walls, then a mirror, reflecting myself. 

I wasn’t ready at all for my reflection. 

My original body was put together with parts of other bodies. I was some kind of Frankenstein monster.

“What the hell?!” was the first thought.

“Well, for a zombie, I don’t look so bad.” was the second one. 

“I am in hell.” was the third one.