"Congratulations on being able to seize a new opportunity."
There is a saying.
That those whose lives have become hopeless are given another chance.
In other words, a chance to live in a new world.
A fantasy world, or a game-based world.
"Are you, by any chance, a goddess?"
"Yes, yes, that's right. So, what would you like to do?"
If someone asked me what kind of life I had lived in the past, all I could say was that I lived because I was alive.
Even though I was old enough that other people would have long since started their social lives, I was mooching off my parents and spending all day on games, games, games... Talking about it would only hurt.
"...Ah, if I reincarnate, can I change my gender too?"
"If you want to become a woman, it is possible."
Even if I gained a new opportunity, what could someone as steeped in defeat as me possibly do?
I just wanted to find a good man and quietly take care of the house.
"Then the gender is fixed as female. Now we need to decide which world you’ll go to... but there are only two places left."
"?"
"A cold place, and a rimworld. Which would you prefer?"
The moment I heard the word rimworld, my mind went blank.
There had to be limits to being thrown into a game. That place was hell.
"If it’s a cold place, then how cold is it...?"
"Let’s see, let’s see, hmm... it goes down to minus 150 degrees."
"Holy shit."
Minus 150 degrees? That was Frostpunk, wasn’t it?
This place was hell too, wasn’t it?
"You’re saying I have to choose this?"
"Yes."
I’ll be honest.
I only played games, so I hadn’t read many novels, and at most I’d only dabbled in webtoons.
But this much was certain.
Woman or whatever, these worldviews were hopeless.
In that case, it was a no-go.
"I don’t want to."
"That isn’t one of the options, so you have to choose one."
"No, both settings are completely hopeless, so that’s unfair... I won’t reincarnate, so can’t you just make me disappear?"
"Wait, wait a moment~ Then... how about this? If you properly clear even one of them, I’ll send you somewhere really, really nice!"
She said she would send me somewhere good if I cleared it, but let’s think about this rationally.
A goddess who suddenly asks, Do you want to go to this hell, or that hell?
Even if she really was a god, even if she was a true goddess, who could possibly trust someone trying to send them to one of two desperate places with no answers in sight?
To put it bluntly, even if I cleared it and was sent somewhere good, there was no way I would live a proper life, and I couldn’t rule out the possibility that “somewhere good” just meant the afterlife.
From then on, it was a tedious back-and-forth.
I don’t want to go.
You have to go.
How does that make any sense? I don’t want a new life, so just send me off cleanly.
I had no idea how much time had passed, but in the end, unable to hold back my boiling rage, I cursed.
"Hey, you fucking bitch, when someone talks, you should know how to listen!!"
"What, what did you just..."
"I said I don’t want to! All you have to do is make me disappear, but you keep pissing me off..."
"I didn’t curse even once while we were talking, so how can you be so rude as to curse at me?!"
"Bullshit. Hey, you’ve been slowly getting on my nerves the whole time we were talking, throwing a whole damn fit trying to send me off no matter what..."
"But I didn’t curse!!"
She was trying so hard to send me to hell that it disgusted me, so I cursed.
And now the goddess started denouncing me as trash just because I had cursed.
At this point, I absolutely couldn’t open with, “I’m sorry I cursed.”
No, I judged that I shouldn’t be talking to this goddess at all in the first place, so I firmly shut my mouth and ignored her.
"...You, someone like you. Even putting it nicely, honestly—fine. If you hate both, then I’ll just mix them together at my discretion."
"...? What, both?"
The goddess brought up an opaque window and began operating something.
"Let’s see you try to live well."
A light bright enough to blind me flashed, and when I opened my eyes, I was dumbfounded by a scene where I couldn’t see anything at all.
And then,
[Huh? Why is there nothing?]
"...Ugh, it’s cold. Huh... huh???"
[You can hear my voice, right? I’m the goddess. But that’s strange? This shouldn’t be happening...]
"Where the hell am I, you fucking bitch!!!"
[I don’t know! I just picked somewhere at random so you could live well in a cold place, and, um... sea ice? Yes, it says sea ice!]
" "
No matter how slapdash the world was, this was still too much.
A naked sea-ice start in a rimworld that was hell even if you just stood still? Fuck no!!!