Reincarnated in another world without my pants.
Chapter 1: The Great Dryad Forest
“Ohhh—my head.”
Jamie Blake groaned and tried to sit up. The attempt lasted less than a second. Pain surged—sharp and unforgiving—and he collapsed back onto the ground. Everything hurt. Not just his head, but his entire body. This was nothing like a normal hangover. It felt deeper, heavier, as if the pain itself had weight.
What the heck happened?
Jamie tried to think, but the throbbing in his skull made concentration impossible. The pain pulsed like a ticking time bomb, each beat a silent warning that his head might split open at any moment. Answers mattered. He knew that much.
So he did the only thing he could think of.
Carefully, Jamie cracked open his right eye.
The moment sunlight hit his retina, agony tore through him. His eye slammed shut instantly, faster than a child yanking their hand from a hot stove. He’d learned that lesson at six years old: never touch what burns. A mistake he’d never repeated.
Unfortunately, there was no lesson to learn here. Sooner or later, he’d need his eyes.
Which meant he’d have to try again.
Later, he decided.
For now, Jamie stayed perfectly still, breathing as shallowly as possible, content to lie in misery. There was no reason to make things worse. He had already sampled “worse” earlier and found it deeply overrated.
A few tears slipped from the corner of his eye. He didn’t dare wipe them away, trusting gravity to handle the situation like the reliable force of nature it was. If nothing else, physics was still on his side.
Whatever this was, it wasn’t all bad news—he realized that after several long, careful breaths. When he’d first woken up, he’d gained an intimate, spiritual understanding of what true pain meant. He’d stared into its abyss. Now, mercifully, he was no longer on speaking terms with it. It had only been a few minutes, but the improvement was obvious. The pain was retreating, perhaps embarrassed by how dramatic it had been.
Encouraged, Jamie doubled down on doing absolutely nothing.
Determined not to move, he remained motionless on the ground. He had no desire to rekindle the agony from earlier. Instead, he focused on that insane dream from last night while continuing his breathing exercise. Apparently, the technique designed to help women survive childbirth also worked wonders for a grown man dealing with a catastrophic hangover. Science was amazing.
As dreams went, that one was a monster. A real overachiever. Never had a dream felt so real—at least not that he could remember. He tried to pin it on the alcohol, but this wasn’t his first rodeo. He knew the difference between drunk weird and existentially alarming. No, alcohol hadn’t caused this. Alcohol had merely set the stage and dimmed the lights.
The dream had started out so harmless, too. Just a simple conversation with a goddess.
Simple. Right.
Jamie almost laughed at that. The sound never made it out.
Being told you’d died was not, Jamie felt, a great icebreaker. Definitely not how you opened a conversation with someone you’d just met. Had the Goddess at least said hello first? He honestly couldn’t remember. Replaying it in his head, he recalled that things had only spiraled downhill from that absolute banger of an opening. He didn’t need to be Sigmund Freud—or even particularly awake—to understand why the whole thing had startled him out of unconsciousness.
Some dreams you shrugged off and went about your day. Others left you crying on the floor, practicing lamaze breathing, and quietly rethinking every life choice that had led you to this exact patch of carpet.
Jamie wasn’t entirely sure which category this one belonged in. So far it seemed like the latter, but he was withholding final judgment. The Goddess, after all, hadn’t stopped at you’re dead. No, she’d followed it up with the kind of information that really stuck the landing: he was being sent to a new world and—oh yeah—he’d be doing it as a woman.
That alone felt like grounds for an emergency meeting of his subconscious. Even now, thinking about it sent a shiver through him.
Which was how Jamie realized, a beat too late, that he’d moved.
He froze, bracing himself for the familiar spike of agony.
It never came.
Instead, the pain… eased. Not vanished, but dulled, like whatever had been tormenting him had finally gotten bored and wandered off. Jamie almost laughed. The tiny movement had helped, the way shaking your leg brought it back from the dead after sitting on it too long. Apparently, resurrection protocols applied to limbs as well.
Still lying there, Jamie finally made up his mind.
I’m definitely on the floor and not in bed, he confirmed.
The surface beneath him was far too unforgiving to qualify as a mattress.
Great. Floor again, he thought, mildly amused at his own consistency.
Bedroom carpet, maybe?
Not his worst post-drinking performance. That honor belonged to the time he’d passed out halfway into his apartment, having somehow managed to get his key into the lock before gravity decisively ended negotiations. Honestly, making it almost to the bed went straight into the win column as far as Jamie was concerned. Progress was progress.
Of course, that assessment relied heavily on selective accounting. If he was being truly honest with himself—and counted all the times he’d passed out after excessive drinking, not just the ones where he technically made it home—then the undisputed gold medalist was Tijuana, eight years ago. An event so aggressively ill-advised it still came with mental highlight reels, a lingering sense of shame, and an ironclad vow never to speak of it again.
Considering his next move, Jamie mentally scrapped his usual hangover routine. The one where he staggered directly to the medicine cabinet like a pilgrim seeking divine intervention. Oddly enough, extra-strength aspirin didn’t feel necessary this time.
“Overachiever,” Jamie muttered, really leaning into the word, as though waking up on the floor without crippling pain were some kind of personal triumph.
So close to his normal self, Jamie almost tried opening both eyes—but stopped at the last second, deciding discretion was the better part of valor. Everything was improving. No need to poke a sleeping bear.
I’ll wait a few more minutes.
The earlier pain was still too fresh.
Just what in the heck had he drunk last night—and how much of it?
Surely not tequila. He’d stayed away from that stuff ever since the Tijuana rooftop incident.
Okay, that was a lie.
Jamie wasn’t sure why he’d done that just now; lying to himself wouldn’t help. The truth was, he still drank perfectly made margaritas when they were offered. They tasted too good to pass up. Besides, it would be rude not to appreciate the hard work those poor bartenders put into mastering their craft.
Jamie was nothing if not respectful of other people’s dedication.
Maybe it was better to say he didn’t drink tequila straight anymore.
He considered that phrasing for half a second and immediately discarded it.
He blamed it on that dang song glorifying tequila—the one with the catchy lyrics that played once or twice a night in the Lamplight District of San Diego and somehow made bad decisions feel patriotic.
Thinking about tequila made him smack his lips. His throat was parched.
Wait.
Had he even gone out drinking?
Jamie didn’t remember doing so. Then why the headache?
He didn’t remember anything from last night, he finally realized. No—that wasn’t quite right. Some memories were there, but heavily fragmented, and none of them involved alcohol.
Fragmented.
The word triggered something the Goddess had said.
He’d asked why he was struggling to remember how he’d ended up floating in a misty void in front of the most gorgeous woman he’d ever seen. Her answer had shaken him to his core—then and now.
You died from a violent act.
Your mind is protecting you from the trauma. That’s why most of your final memories are missing. Normally, all memories of your past life would be purged, but I need you to remember yours.
They will return in time, when you are ready.
Jamie had laughed at first, assuming it was a joke.
The look on her face made it very clear it wasn’t.
He remembered firing off question after question. The Goddess had answered patiently—kindly, even—but far fewer than he’d wanted.
Then a horrible, completely unrelated thought blindsided him.
Last night was Wednesday.
That meant this was Thursday.
I have work.
“What time is it?” Jamie blurted, eyes snapping open as he bolted upright, already searching for his alarm clock.
Please don’t be late. Please don’t be late.
“Oh, frick…”
He never really swore—thanks, Mom—so that was the nuclear option.
The alarm clock was missing.
Along with the bed, the bedroom and his entire apartment. Instead, Jamie found himself staring at what appeared to be the absolute best Mother Nature had ever produced. It looked like a Bob Ross fever dream: rolling hills, blue skies, sunlight filtering through trees that were far too happy for his current emotional state.
Worse, that was all there was.
No buildings. No roads. No people. Just miles of untouched wilderness and an aggressive number of cheerful little trees.
Jamie looked down at his immediate surroundings.
His “carpet” was a grassy meadow.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
He sat there for a moment, processing.
“Well,” he said to no one in particular, “this is going to make my commute awkward.”
To his left, a river split the field in two—too wide to jump, but narrow enough that any average swimmer could cross without trouble. Normally, Jamie loved the peaceful sound of water flowing downstream. Right now, it was the percussion instrument in a full-blown symphony of confusion.
Jamie didn’t scare easily—but this was deeply not normal. His last shred of composure snapped when a massive flying insect, roughly the size of a hummingbird, buzzed past his face.
In one fluid, dignified motion—if dignity involved panic—Jamie leapt backward to his feet. He hated bugs. Loathed them. This thing was way too big and far too confident about its airspace. He relaxed almost immediately when he realized it was some kind of bee. Maybe a bumblebee.
Oh. A bee, he liked bees.
They were the sole exception to his heck-no-bug rule. Bees were useful. Bees had jobs. Bees paid rent in the form of pollination. Bees should honestly be their own category, he decided, watching it buzz away like it hadn’t just shaved several years off his life expectancy. Despite its size, the insect vanished almost instantly once it reached the treeline, its black-and-green coloring blending perfectly into the forest.
With that distraction gone, Jamie forced himself to take a proper look around—this time focusing beyond the meadow.
If he didn’t see any sign of civilization soon, he honestly had no idea what the next step was. Crying felt premature. Screaming felt unproductive. He started by looking downstream, where the terrain dipped lower.
“When in doubt, walk downstream,” Jamie muttered. It sounded like the kind of advice that showed up in survival manuals right before someone died of exposure. Then he stopped as his eyes locked onto the massive tree dominating the distant skyline.
“…Nope.”
The thing had to be at least a mile away. Even from here, Jamie had to tilt his head back just to see the top. And even then, he wasn’t convinced he was seeing all of it. For all he knew, the upper branches were poking holes in the sky.
That wasn’t a tree.
That was a statement.
Jamie stared at it, waiting for his brain to supply a rational explanation—giant redwood, weird perspective, lingering concussion, literally anything.
Nothing came.
“Okay,” he said out loud, because talking to himself felt appropriate now. “So either I’m still dreaming… or the Goddess undersold the ‘new world’ part.”
The tree did not respond. It loomed. Judging him. Somewhere deep in his gut, a cold certainty settled in. Normal forests did not come with boss-level vegetation. And suddenly, being late for work felt like a very small problem.
This wasn’t Earth. And Jamie wasn’t dreaming.
If the offensively large tree hadn’t already settled that debate, the sky finished the job. He squinted east, where the celestial situation was… crowded. Four bodies, if he counted what he assumed was this planet’s version of a sun, still struggling to clear the tree line like it was running late too. Jamie wasn’t an astronomer, but he was fairly confident about one thing: Earth came standard with one moon. Not three.
And even that felt optimistic, because that massive dark-blue thing hanging up there didn’t look very moon-ish. Planet, maybe? A cosmic spectator? Whatever it was, it absolutely did not belong.
So. Two moons. One extremely visible planet. Zero Starbucks.
This was really happening. Any lingering hope that it wasn’t evaporated on the spot. Which was when Jamie realized he’d forgotten to check something very important.
Swallowing hard, he looked down—bracing himself to confirm his greatest fear.
“Well,” Jamie said, “my day just hit rock bottom.”
The voice that came out was not his.
It was higher. Smoother. Definitely not the voice of a man who owned three carefully curated hoodies, all chosen to make him sound more authoritative on conference calls.
Huh.
It was funny how you could talk for several minutes straight and not actually hear yourself until your brain finally caught up. Jamie had been narrating his existential crisis out loud like an audiobook with poor editing, and only now did his ears file a formal complaint.
Nope. That was a woman’s voice.
He briefly considered panicking properly, but there were simply too many problems competing for first place. Wrong planet. Too many moons. Murder tree. Goddess trauma. And now—this.
Priorities.
He looked down.
White fabric. Soft. Flowing. Definitely not something he owned, unless one counted that one regrettable toga party, and even then—
Jamie swallowed.
His hands moved before his brain could stop them, as if conducting an emergency inventory. They brushed the front of the dress, paused, then continued upward.
“…Oh,” he said quietly.
There was a beat.
Then, louder: “Oh.”
His hands froze, as if caught trespassing.
This explained the voice.
This explained a lot.
Jamie stared ahead at the meadow, the river, the absurdly heroic tree in the distance, and nodded slowly—because apparently this was his life now.
“Okay,” he muttered. “So that’s a thing.”
Somewhere, deep in the universe, a goddess was probably checking boxes on a clipboard. And Jamie was pretty sure he’d just found the biggest one.
Jamie’s train of thought derailed when a warm gust of wind rolled in from the west, sending long strands of hair whipping across his face. Without thinking, he tucked the loose strands behind his right ear.
Huh.Brown.
“I’m not even blond anymore,” he muttered. “Not sure what the Goddess has against my natural hair color, but wow. Rude.”
The realization barely registered before his hands—apparently freelancers now—began investigating the white dress he was wearing. The fabric was soft. Flowing. Suspiciously flattering.
Then his hands kept going.
“Oh.”
They stopped at his chest. A chest that was, objectively speaking, doing very well for itself.
Jamie stared down at them, then gently—purely for scientific reasons—gave them a squeeze.
“…Wow. These are really nice.”
C cups, if he had to guess. And he did have to guess, because his brain had apparently decided this was the correct moment to activate his internal sommelier of breasts. Texture, weight, responsiveness—yes, yes, everything was checking out.
As a longtime admirer of quality boobs, Jamie felt qualified to judge.
He considered a mental ranking.
Okay. Not number one. That honor would always belong to Ashley—his last girlfriend. Great boobs, great personality, terrible timing. The breakup had been rough. In hindsight, telling her she was “the right woman at the wrong time” probably hadn’t softened the blow the way he’d imagined.
Live and learn.
Jamie gave his chest another thoughtful squeeze.
These were solid. Easily top three.
Amanda—his former supervisor—still edged them out slightly, but that had been a complicated situation involving tequila, poor decisions, and HR paperwork. The paperwork had been about her conduct, not his. Someone in the office, clearly lacking joy or an appreciation for short-lived but deeply educational relationships, had complained. The fling itself had been brief, ill-advised, and fueled almost entirely by tequila and mutual overconfidence. In retrospect, it had also been the moment Jamie learned two important life lessons: never drink margaritas with your boss, and always assume HR is watching what happens at the end of year holiday office party. He hadn’t found out until later—again, courtesy of tequila—that Amanda’s impressive assets had been professionally upgraded by a very expensive Hollywood surgeon. Which, Jamie felt, really should come with an asterisk. Or at least a separate category.
“Nope,” Jamie decided aloud. “These are natural. That counts.”
He nodded to himself.
“Congratulations. You’re number two.”
That was when the rest of his brain finally caught up.
“Oh no.”
The words landed with weight.
Because ranking his own breasts probably shouldn’t have felt this…normal; or, for that matter possible, in his case.
Jamie froze, hands hovering awkwardly in midair, as the full implications began lining up—one after another—like an execution squad made entirely of bad realizations.
Two feelings slammed into Jamie at the same time.Shame—and embarrassment.
Powerful stuff. Disorienting stuff. The kind of emotions he usually only experienced secondhand, like through a friend’s story or an HR training video. There was no external witness, no one to judge him—but somehow that made it worse. The judgment was coming from inside the house.
Was this… a girl thing?
What’s the point of having these if you can’t enjoy them whenever you want? After all, he’d paid far too steep a price for them.
Jamie wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do now that his little trooper was gone. They’d been through so much together. High school—awkward but enthusiastic. College—an absolute golden age. Even adulthood, brief as it had been, had produced many fine adventures.
Jamie and Chester. The two amigos. Taking on the world.
Now the band was broken up.
Jamie felt lost. Alone.
He dropped to his knees, staring into the middle distance, observing a respectful moment of silence for fallen comrades. The good times replayed in his mind. So many memories. So little warning.
Gone too soon.
…Okay, that was weird.
The grief faded almost as quickly as it had arrived, replaced by something far more dangerous.
Curiosity.
How many people actually got to wake up in a brand-new world?
And that’s when it hit him—really hit him.
He felt good.
No. Not good.
Fantastic.
The pain was completely gone. Not dulled, not manageable—gone. Jamie felt like he could run three marathons back-to-back and still have enough energy left over to make some extremely questionable life choices afterward.
Whatever the Goddess had done, she hadn’t half-assed it.
Jamie slowly stood, flexing experimentally.
“Well,” he said, squaring his shoulders and looking out over the alien wilderness, “if this is a nightmare… it’s doing a very bad job of it.”
And for the first time since waking up on the floor of a meadow on a world that absolutely was not Earth, Jamie smiled. Sure, he was in a woman’s body—but he felt incredible. Strong. Energized. Like he’d been upgraded to a premium subscription he definitely hadn’t paid for. Jamie couldn’t decide if this was just a woman thing or if the Goddess had slipped him some divine buffs.
For the first time in his entire life, he truly wished he’d paid attention during a conversation.
He vaguely remembered the Goddess talking for a long time. Explaining things. Important things. Unfortunately, Jamie had been far too distracted by… well. Her. Which now felt like a tactical error of the highest order.
Jamie tilted his head up toward the sky.
“Can I get a redo?” he asked politely.
The sky offered nothing in response. No booming voice. No celestial correction. Not even a sarcastic cloud formation.
Several long seconds passed.
Jamie sighed.“Guess not.”
Well.
If the universe wasn’t interested in clarifying things, he’d just have to conduct his own investigation.
“Time to see what we’re working with,” Jamie said, bracing himself like a man about to open a suspiciously labeled fridge container.
Jamie knelt by the river’s edge, choosing a shallow pool where the current slowed to a polite suggestion. The water was so clear it felt rude, like it was intentionally trying to show off.
A fish drifted lazily through the pool, entirely unconcerned with its own mortality.
“Bold strategy,” Jamie muttered, then finally looked down at his reflection.
“Holy crap.”
The face staring back at him was… stunning. Annoyingly so. The kind of beautiful that made mirrors feel smug. It took him a second to place it—then his stomach did a little flip.
“Oh. Of course,” he said flatly. “I look like the Goddess.”
Only younger.
Not identical—thankfully—but close enough that if there were a family reunion, name tags would be necessary. Same flawless symmetry. Same cheekbones that looked professionally engineered. Same lips that suggested they’d never known the pain of chapping.
“This feels excessive,” Jamie told the water. “Like, was subtlety not an option?”
His eyes—emerald green, because apparently his former blue wasn’t dramatic enough—blinked back at him. Big. Bright. Slightly anime.
He sighed. “I look like I could sell merch.”
“Time to weaponize this face,” Jamie declared, because apparently that was a sentence he could say now.
Still staring into the river, he tried the first of three poses he figured might be useful once he found civilization—or whatever passed for it out here. He wasn’t doing this for fun.
Certainly not.
He started with a classic.
Head tilted slightly left. One eye closed in a deliberate wink. Right hand raised in a peace sign.
A pose so universal it probably existed in every world.
“Nailed it,” Jamie chirped, loudly and far too pleased with himself—and far too aware that the sound had come out in a cute girl’s voice.
Reality slammed back into him.
Jamie immediately dropped as low as possible, flattening himself like a startled deer and listening hard for any response to the noise he had just contributed to the ecosystem.
Nothing roared.Nothing growled.Nothing tried to eat him.
Several painfully long seconds later, Jamie cautiously lifted his head.
Still clear.
He exhaled loudly. “Wow. That was really dumb.”
He winced. “Let’s maybe not announce our presence to the wilderness, Jamie. Especially if there are oversized bear-alien-things involved.”
He honestly didn’t know how women managed to function when they looked this cute without constantly getting themselves killed.
After a few calming breaths—and a stern internal lecture—Jamie moved on to pose number two. He liked to call, Oh no, what will I ever do?—the damsel-in-distress special.
Was Jamie using humor as a coping mechanism? Absolutely—and he knew it.
Hands clasped together under his chin. Fingers intertwined. Eyes widened just a bit. He tried to look helpless. The reflection nearly knocked the breath out of him.
“Oh… wow,” Jamie murmured. “That’s… way too good.”
He tilted his head a fraction more.
“I would absolutely help me.”
The smile slipped from his face a moment later as an uncomfortable realization set in.
This was fun.
Jamie frowned. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.
No—no. This was practical. Tactical. Survival-oriented. He wasn’t doing this for enjoyment. Obviously. How many times had he been manipulated by a pretty face?
Too many.
One of these looks, used at the right moment, under the right circumstances, could literally save his life. That’s all this was.
Totally.
The final pose was his personal kryptonite. The I’m shy and super cute maneuver. It always started with brushing hair behind the ear, and the longer the hair, the better the effect. Jamie’s new hair fell just past his shoulders. More than sufficient.
This look had made him do so many stupid things over the years. A tried-and-true weapon, and he intended to master it.
Jamie lifted his hand and brushed the light brown hair behind his right ear—
—and froze.
“Oh, my freak,” he gasped. “They’re pointy.”
He clapped both hands over his mouth, eyes wide with delight, a clear chick move that he wasn’t sure had been intentional or not; then immediately remembered where he was.
Jamie scanned left.Then right. Nothing attacked him.
“Well,” he muttered, lowering his hands, “I really thought that was the one that got me eaten.”
He glanced around again, just to be sure.
Still safe. Jamie snapped his attention back to the reflection.
“I have elf ears,” he whispered reverently. “I’m not just a girl. I’m a super-hot elf girl.”
He turned his head side to side, checking both ears, brushing more hair away to confirm it wasn’t a fluke.
This was… a lot.
On top of everything else, he was now a literal fairytale creature—straight out of the games and books he loved. Jamie had always picked elves when given the choice. Female elves, specifically. Not because he wanted to be one. Obviously. They were just… objectively superior.
Every single time.
His friends’ teasing suddenly felt extremely prophetic.
The joy lasted right up until his brain betrayed him with an intrusive memory involving a mirror, an open robe, a movie villain, and deeply unsettling dance choices.
“Gross,” Jamie muttered, shuddering violently and shaking his head.
Nope.Nope nope nope.
That thought, unfortunately, brought a far bigger problem crashing down on him.
Bigger than monsters.Bigger than alien bears.Even bigger than losing Chester.
Jamie straightened.
“I like women,” he said firmly. “I cannot be into dudes.”
He considered that for exactly half a second. Then sighed.
“…Guess I’m a lesbian now.”
He nodded once, satisfied. Decision made.