“Lily! Why are you so late?”

The moment I opened the door, a wolf, half the height of the entrance, looked up with a sulky expression. Just because I was an hour late, the place was turned upside down. Haha.

Beyond the large wolf, the house was in shambles. Those floating feathers couldn’t possibly be from Aunty Mari’s handmade cushion, could they? Those were expensive. Damn dog.

When I glared at the wolf, he swiftly averted his large black eyes.

“I swear, I just nibbled a bit and it just tore apart.”

Liar! You’re lying right now!

How did I know? His voice was calm, but his drooping ears betrayed the truth. Feeling my gaze on his ears, the wolf whimpered.

“I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.”

The apologetic wolf rested his big head on my shoulder. Unlike usual, I didn’t pat him immediately. Noticing my lack of response, his ears and tail drooped noticeably. He nudged my neck, whining.

“I messed up. Forgive me, Lily.”

“Ugh.”

Damn it, I’ve lost.

With his mouth, he took my hand and placed it on his head, and I couldn’t help but smile. I’ve always had a soft spot for pleading eyes.

Seeing his drooping spirit, I stroked the wolf’s head. A deep, pleased rumble vibrated from his throat, and his tail wagged lightly.

Here in this world, where werewolves, with tails and ears fluttering on human bodies, exist—it was entirely different from the world I knew.

And so, it was a fact that I had discovered a long time ago.

***

If someone were to ask for the motto of my life, I’d say without hesitation, “To live and die ordinarily.” Some might laugh upon hearing this. But in my opinion, there’s nothing harder than living an ordinary life.

To earn just enough money, meet someone of a similar temperament and share a love that neither burns fiercely nor fades quickly, to have children who take after me and don’t rot from the inside, and then, in the end, to close my eyes peacefully.

This was my idea of a perfectly ordinary life.

Why this obsession with being ordinary, you ask? It’s because from birth, I’ve always been far from ‘ordinary.’

From the moment I cried out as a baby, I recalled my entire past life, like a panorama. That’s right, I remembered my past life. The life I recalled as soon as I began this new one was glamorous – tragically so, and for all the wrong reasons.

The timeline of my past life never once drew a peaceful horizon until the day I died. Continuous twists and turns weighed on me, constant incidents and accidents drained my fortune.

To make matters worse, I felt cursed, never settling anywhere, bouncing from one misfortune to the next. Stress wore me down until I finally passed away in my mid-thirties due to an aneurysm.

So, yes, in this life, I wanted nothing more than to be ordinary. However, as soon as I started to see and hear, I began to feel an ominous sensation.

I had no father. By the time I could crawl, I realized he was missing from this life. But that was okay.

In my previous life, although both my parents were alive, neither were of any help to me. So, I wasn’t saddened or depressed by my father’s absence.

If having something isn’t better than not having it at all, then not having it from the beginning isn’t bad either, right? Anyway, my father’s absence wasn’t the start of my ominous feelings. So, what was it?

It was the language my beautiful mother spoke. Mom was quite a looker—blonde hair, blue eyes. She was tall and slim, like a foreign model you’d see in magazines.

When I began to see, looking at her made me mistakenly think I was born to some Hollywood superstar.

That illusion was short-lived because of the unfamiliar language she spoke. From my mother’s beautiful lips flowed a language that was definitely not English, a language I’d never heard before.

While I didn’t know every language on Earth, I felt an instinctual unease hearing this unfamiliar tongue. An unease that perhaps I wasn’t born on Earth but somewhere else entirely.

The realization came a bit later, specifically when I turned four.

Until then, I hadn’t met anyone other than my mother. When I was still crawling and couldn’t speak, I didn’t really mind not going outside (though I did feel trapped). But as soon as I could talk, walk, and even run around, I kept trying to venture outside, only to be caught by my mother every time.

Our home was a two-story place, and aside from the front door, it felt like a fortress with barely any windows. What was out there that our house had to be designed so defensively? Ever since I could think on my own, my time indoors was divided between a sense of foreboding and burning curiosity.

My ever-anxious mother would always tell me,

“The world is too dangerous for a young one like you. I know it’s stifling, but be patient. I’m doing all this to protect you.”

She would just repeat it over and over again.

Then one day, some time after I turned four, someone new visited our secluded home.

The unexpected chime of the doorbell still resonates in my memory, even now that I’m an adult. Who would’ve thought our home even had a doorbell? I was so startled that I dropped my spoon, something I’d never done before.

Looking up, I saw my mother’s face flush with surprise. She quickly scooped me up and rushed me to the upstairs bedroom. Before closing the door, she repeated with a frantic look that I must not come out.

For a moment, I considered obeying her. But at the impulsive age of four (a perfect age to justify my actions), curiosity got the better of me. Fearing my steps might be heard, I tiptoed towards the stairs leading to the first floor.

As I got closer, I could hear my mother’s soft, melodious voice intertwined with a gruff, low-pitched one. Holding onto the railing, I leaned in, straining to hear their conversation more clearly.

“…Do you really think hiding like this will solve anything? You should’ve asked for my help.”

“I’m fine. It’s better if no one knows until she’s older. You know how dangerous this place is for a child.”

So why is it dangerous then?!

Frustrated with my mother’s evasive answers, I began descending the stairs. In the midst of my sneaky descent, I heard the deep voice express surprise and maybe even horror.

“A human? She doesn’t resemble the half-human? Are you sure she’s not a hybrid but just… human?”

Half? Who or what’s a Half? And what’s this hybrid talk?

Amid the puzzling conversation, I continued down the stairs, determined to uncover the so-called danger my mother always spoke of. Nothing could halt my soaring curiosity at this point.

With each tiny step, I reached the bottom of the staircase, finally laying eyes on the very danger my mother had warned me about.

“Ah!”

With a scream, I promptly fainted.

Why did I faint, you ask? Thanks to my tumultuous past life, I’d been dragged around by gangsters and had seen things that gave me some nerve. But faced with a terror I couldn’t process, passing out was the only option.

There were way too many arms for a human, wriggling restlessly from both sides of the body. Sharp fangs protruded from the mouth, clashing loudly.

Then, those piercing red eyes. A being that was not human.

In the sum of 34 years from my past life and 4 years in this one, making it a total of 38 years, I had never seen such a monstrous figure. I fainted to the sound of my mother’s beautiful voice, yelling, “Liliana!”

That moment ranked number one in my life’s “Least Ordinary Moments”. I thought that ranking would remain unchanged forever. But…

“Lily, Lily… You have such a sweet scent. So tempting that I could eat you…”

As the breath drew close and a face neared my neck, thanks to the wolf, a foreboding feeling told me that my rankings of bizarre moments were about to be completely overturned.