A cold, male voice came through the cellphone that Adrian was clutching tightly in hand.

"Where are you right now?"

Adrian lowered his gaze to the floor and didn't respond. Around him, he could hear the rapid clicking of keyboard keys and mouse clicks along with the cries of impassioned young men as they played their various games.

"Are you seriously at the PC café again? What the hell is wrong with you?" Click.

Adrian's heart sank as he lowered the cellphone onto the table. He told his body to get up from his chair. To walk out of that place and go home. To beg his parents for forgiveness.

But a tiny voice in the back of his head told him that it was too late. He had already lost his research scholarship, his girlfriend, and the trust of his family. There was nothing he could say to make things better, nor was there anything he could do to get his life back on track. He didn't even know what that might look like.

So, like he did every single day for the past three years, he looked wearily at the computer screen and double clicked on a game icon.

…

Adrian woke up to the feeling of two soft, warm mounds squished against his face. Instinctively, he tried to push them away, only to find that he had no arms. Again.

He groaned. Was he back at the river? That damned skeleton…

Upon opening his eyes, Adrian curiously found himself looking at two blue blobs. Beyond these two blobs, Adrian could see more blobs, although they were of different colors. It was kind of like looking at a bunch of rainbow jelly hills. And past them, there seemed to be wooden bars.

'Am I in a cage? Wait, but cages don't normally have open tops, or do they?' Adrian wondered.

Adrian tried turn his head to look around, but to avail. Instead, he became rather tired, and his eyes started to droop.

'I just woke up though... Dammit. What the heck is going on?'

…

Some time later, Adrian stirred again, and after some experimentation discovered that he could look around without actually moving his head, or should he call it his body? Strangely enough, it was like his head was his body. He also found that, despite having no arms or legs, he could move by rolling around like a ball. Without changing his field of view. Very curious.

How should he explain this… it was like his eyes were floating on the surface of his head-body, and he could move them independent of each other. Like, he could look all around him without moving his body in the slightest. It was super weird. Slightly disturbing too, but there was even something more concerning.

The jelly hills in front of him seemed to be alive. Breathing, living things, though he couldn't identify an external nose or mouth that they were using to breathe with. Maybe it was those two tiny holes under their eyes? If he had to guess, these jellies were 'slimes'. You know, those round, blob like monsters you could see in RPG games.

Since he was in the cage with them, did that mean he was one too? That would explain his physical characteristics, at least.

Hmm, in that case, what color was he? Bah, useless thoughts.

Everything was too surreal, and Adrian wondered if all of this was just a dream. Before he could make heads or tails out of his situation, Adrian felt the lull of sleep tugging at his consciousness once again.

…

This process of waking up and soon falling back asleep repeated itself a few times before Adrian felt that he had a fairly decent sense of what was going on. It seemed that he and his fellow slime brethren, who seemed to spend most of their time sleeping, were at some sort of pet shop.

Beyond the bars of the lidless cage they were trapped in, Adrian could clearly recognize the basic features of a pet shop. There were shelves stock full of empty cages, toys, and a variety of food contained in jars or bags, and there was a little area in the middle of the shop that looked like a play area.

At some point during the day, giants started to stream into the shop with a jingle of the door chimes. They strode through the room and picked up various goods before they consulted a cheerful, fat, green giant who seemed to be the shopkeeper. Once the consultation was over, the giants would take one of Adrian's slime brethren to the play area for a while, and eventually take the slime with them out of the shop.

Only a few of these giants looked like normal human beings as far as Adrian could tell. Most of the giants, however, looked human but had strange peculiarities, such as animal ears or tails. The vast majority of them even had bizarre skin colors, like the shopkeeper. It was fascinating to see. It was like he was in a completely different world. Actually, Adrian suspected that was probably the case.

That would mean that he had been reincarnated in an alternate world, and in the body of a slime, no less.

As crazy as that sounded, the reality of his situation was unmistakable. It left him dumbfounded and unsure of how to feel.

Should he be grateful that he was alive? That seemed like a sick joke, considering that he lived as though he was dead in his past life. He mulled this over in his head until the familiar sensation of tiredness came. This time, he welcomed the bliss of oblivion wholeheartedly.

…

Several days passed by, and Adrian imagined that it had been at least a week since he had been reincarnated. In the cage he was trapped in, none of his fellow brethren demonstrated an ounce of intelligence, and they lazed around sleeping for most of the day. Then again, he figured that they were babies, and he guessed that even slime babies needed a lot of sleep. Also, there was nothing to do. This left Adrian with plenty of time to reflect.

In the end, he was grateful for being given a second chance at life. A part of him still chastised himself for being so shameless, but he shelved that feeling away for the time being. He hoped that it would disappear eventually.

He told himself that he would make the most out of this second chance.

What gave him some hope for his future was that Adrian got the feeling that he was wrong about his whole pet shop hypothesis. The customers seemed to always come in pairs. Lovey-dovey couples, actually. Adrian also noticed that they tended to visit several times before picking out a baby.

'Perhaps this is some sort of adoption center, not a pet shop,' Adrian thought, as the owner of the place, wearing the same checkered dress-shirt and a large, leaf on his head as always, came around with breakfast.

Every meal was the same, but Adrian had no qualms about it. The food was always some sort of white pasty goop that looked nasty and tasted delicious. Well, 'taste', in a manner of speaking. Since he didn't have a mouth, he just kind of… jabbed at the paste with a tiny pseudopod and enveloped it into his body. It took him some physical effort to do this, but it was a pretty instinctice process so Adrian didn't have to work it out in his head. Once the food entered his body, it would dissolve and allow him to 'taste' it, though he couldn't fathom how that worked biologically. He kind of missed having a mouth, and couldn't wait until he could transform and assume a human form.

Ah, right. Yes, he had learned that slimes could do that. Transform, that is. Two days ago, Adrian was shocked to witness the green-skinned owner transform into a big, bulbous slime before packing up for the day. Since then, Adrian figured that all of the 'humans' with bizarre colors of skin were, in fact, slimes. He wasn't sure exactly why the slimes chose to adopt a human form, but he guessed that it might have to do with the convenience of having fingers and opposable thumbs, or of having four, separately-moving limbs? Or maybe it was the fact that having a mouth would make speech possible.

As he digested his breakfast, Adrian was deeply contemplating the advantages and disadvantages of the human form when a pair of humanoid slimes suddenly peered in from behind the bars of Adrian's cage, causing him to freeze up in momentary fear. Even after all this time, he still wasn't completely used to the vast difference in size between himself and the 'adults'. Their face was easily twice the diameter of his entire body.

One of the humanoid slimes peering into the cage was a tall, gorgeous lady with long, auburn hair and crimson skin. She wore a dress-shirt that was unbuttoned at the top to reveal the entrance to her cavernous bosoms, and she appeared to be in her late twenties. Adrian presumed that the woman likely had some sort of physically active hobby or occupation, because she had toned, firm muscles on her arms. She was looking at him intensely with fiery red irises and a fierce grin on her face.

Her partner, on the other hand, was a petite woman with short, pale blue hair that fell over her eyes. She was wearing a white summer dress and wire-framed glasses that made her look like a college student. As Adrian peered into the woman's beautiful azure eyes that matched the color of her skin, he thought to himself that she might be the spitting image of a 'calm beauty'.

Hmm… didn't these two visit yesterday without picking a baby? Had they chosen one? Had they chosen… him?

Adrian got his answer when he found himself being lifted into the air by the red-skinned woman as she said something to her partner in a foreign language, and he was taken to the play area in the middle of the room.

He was placed onto the ground, and the two huge women sat cross-legged, staring at him expectantly. Adrian shifted uncomfortably in place.

Erm… Did they want him to do something? What was he supposed to do?

The red-skinned woman laughed heartily, leaned forward, and said something to him that sounded like, "Yunsh!"

Adrian recognized this word as a greeting, but didn't know how to verbalize anything to be able to respond. Instead, he rolled towards her and rubbed his head-body against her hand like he saw the other slime babies doing previously.

"Keiiiii~," the blue-skinned woman said, reaching out to him.

Adrian allowed her to lift him up and place him on her lap. When she began stroking him on the head, he almost fell asleep immediately. The woman's hand was super comfortable and warm.

Adrian felt himself dozing off while the two women talked excitedly with one another, and the blue-skinned woman continued to stroke his head.