Lazarus, wake up...

[Beep! Constellation Centaurus number 715 has activated his consciousness.]

“What is that voice…?”

When Lee Seung-woo heard the mechanical voice in his head, he didn't know how to react. According to his last memories, he had spent the night in his room in his apartment. And besides, he lived alone.

“Who is talking?”

When he opened his eyes, all he could see was the pod hatch of him and the air bubbles rising around him.

Due to the lack of control in his joints, the only thing Lee Seung-woo could move was his eyes, and the speed at which those dilated brown eyes moved, anyone could guess the emotion young Lee Seung-woo was feeling inside.

The circuitry embedded in the crust of his skin, running down his arms and joining his fingers, made it feel like a hunk of metal with some skin on it.

Looking down in more detail, Lee Seung-woo noticed that his physique was not his own. In fact, it seemed that his mind had been put into someone else's body. Or something else...

The tubes attached to his skin seemed to be injected into a series of wires inside him, because Lee Seung-woo was able to feel the cold, hard metal every time those tubes supplied something to his system. He felt like a conscious tool.

The capsule wasn't small either, in fact it was the size of an intensive care unit, and the capsule represented the cold metal table where Lee Seung-woo rested after surgery.

Suddenly and without Lee Seung-woo doing anything, the piece of metal behind his back transported him forward with a lightness and smoothness that made the machine look like something sentient.

As the capsule opened, Lee Seung-woo was able to catch a glimpse of the landscape beyond the capsule for a split second. However, his childish curiosity was quickly overshadowed when the supposedly sentient machine dropped him like a wet rag onto the cold, hard ground.

Lee Seung-woo landed on the green, sticky and viscous liquid that he had been breathing and seeing until seconds ago, and the blow made him spit out and vomit the rest of the liquid from his lungs.

*Bzz!*

When he leaned on the two "arms" of him, Lee Seung-woo could hear an automatic mechanical sound, very similar to an electric screwdriver. In the same way, when the palms of his hands supported the two pillars that he had as "arms", his metal fingers curved in such a way that he only leaned on the tip of them and not in the whole palm of him.

But this vomiting seemed like a child's concern when Lee Seung-woo began to feel the tubes being pulled from his abdomen and back. He writhed like a worm and smacked his forehead against the ground, sending gouts of the viscous liquid into the air. He felt like they were trying to cut through his organs with a dull, rusty saw.

When the pain was half gone, Lee Seung-woo was able to see his surroundings; only to be stunned.

A deer with horns as elegant as a crown froze as it met Lee Seung-woo's eyes. When Lee Seung-woo raised a hand in an act to reach the majestic animal, it jumped twice and was lost in the thick darkness of the big trees of the forest.

The steam from his mouth partially occupied his field of vision and made him understand that the snow that covered the treetops and blanketed the damp earthen ground was as real as his pain.

Other than the capsule that was gone, everything for miles away was forest, and every corner was covered in a layer of thick snow.

“How did I get here? And more importantly, what exactly is here?”

Lee Seung-woo, as anyone might guess, didn't have the foggiest idea what was going on. Memories of him were hazy, but he was sure that central Seoul did not have a forest, much less was supposed to fall in summer with a layer of snow so thick that it would cover up to the elbow of a... 

“Child?”

As Lee Seung-woo thought of an answer, he suddenly realized that the length of his arms and the closeness of his legs to his bare torso was considerably short. Very similar to the type of limbs he would have for a child as young as five.

However, when he pushed himself up and stood up, his doubts immediately shot up; because in fact, he had the body of a five-year-old boy.

“This must be a dream, right? Yes, yes! After all, none of this makes any sense. It's a dream, sure...”

As Lee Seung-woo tried to lie to himself to feel better about the harsh and terrifying new reality of him, he realized that his feet were on fire, as were his uncovered limbs; that made up the majority of his body.

”This isn't a dream, is it?”

His chest began to rise and fall as the steam from his mouth lost heat and his anxiety made it difficult for him to breathe. Reluctantly accepting his present, Lee Seung-woo's mind began to drift into the darkness. Slowly his eyes closed.

However, before his consciousness disappeared, Lee Seung-woo could hear a voice.

—For the love of Vaeloria, it's a child! Ray, come here!

The sound of a dog and approaching footsteps was the last thing Lee Seung-woo heard before falling into a deep sleep.