I’m an Alraune, a plant monster child.
I’m currently sinking into a pond filled with lots of crocodiles.


I was attacked by a crocodile, but thanks to me scattering my poisonous pollen, I managed to survive.
There was just one problem: I was drowning underwater.


Right nearby, two crocodiles are fighting over me.


Stop it!
Don’t fight over me!!


I’d always wanted to say that line at least once in my life, but this was definitely not the situation for it.

At the very least, it wasn’t something you said to someone who was trying to physically eat you.


I need to get out of here somehow.

I want to reunite with the little witch as soon as possible, but I have no idea what’s happening above the surface.

Still, every cloud has a silver lining.
By falling into the pond, I’ve gained access to unlimited water.

I’m recharged.
Water tastes so good!

I’ve recovered my strength, but what do I do next?

I’m a plant.
Unlike animals like humans, I don’t breathe with lungs.

That said, plants still breathe, taking in oxygen and releasing carbon dioxide.

Even if I couldn’t breathe normally, photosynthesizing lets me produce oxygen from carbon dioxide, circulating it within my body to some extent.
But it wasn’t enough to make up for everything I needed, so I still felt suffocated.

I wouldn’t drown right away, but since I wasn’t a plant meant to live underwater to begin with, it was pretty rough.


Ah, look at that!
With the two rampaging crocodiles stirring up the water, something came drifting over.

Could it be a waterweed?
Waterweed, as the name suggests, lives in water.
It’s specially adapted to survive underwater.


That said, even plants that live underwater need to breathe.
Land plants exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide through tiny openings called stomata, which are found on the surfaces of their leaves.

However, since aquatic plants are never at risk of drying out, they have thin epidermal layers and generally lack the stomata.
Even without the stomata, they are able to absorb oxygen dissolved in the water through the entire surface of their leaves.

Which means, if I ingest an aquatic plant, I should be able to breathe underwater.
I extended my vines and grabbed the waterweed.
Then I popped it straight into my lower mouth.


And just like that, I had gained the abilities of an aquatic plant.

While I wouldn’t drown underwater anymore, the problem was that I still couldn’t swim.

No matter how desperately I moved my vines, they were too thin. Sadly, all I could do was stir up the water.
I couldn’t swim. After all, I was just a potted plant……


Even so, as I kept desperately spinning my vines, a crocodile’s tail came flying toward me.
Looks like I got caught up in their fight.
The tail slammed into my tiny body like a battering ram.

I raised a shield of vines to block it.
But even so, I was blown through the water.

I felt utterly powerless.
There was nothing I could do underwater.

I was nothing more than a floating object.

As I bitterly accepted my own weakness, I was carried away somewhere.
As if being pulled toward something, my body surged forward faster and faster.

Before I knew it, I had been swallowed by a massive current.

Flowing water.
This was a river.

Somehow, I must’ve been washed from the pond into the river.

To have escaped that hopeless situation… it felt like nothing short of a miracle……!
Maybe God hasn’t abandoned me after all!

In any case, it seems I had managed to escape the crocodiles, so that was a relief.
I may not be lucky, but I do seem to have a knack for surviving bad luck.


That said, it didn’t change the fact that I still couldn’t do anything in the river.

The bottom of my bucket was floating up at the surface.
Maybe because my bulb was so light, everything had flipped upside down.
Left upside down, I had no choice but to surrender myself to the river.


Even when I stretched my vines up above the water, it didn’t look like I could grab hold of the riverbank.
The strength needed to dig into the ground while being swept along by the river just wasn’t there in the vines of a little girl.


At this point, the only thing I could do was hope the little witch finds me.
If only she’d notice that I’m being swept down the river……


But I wasn’t alone in the river.


Oh my, hello there.
You must be a fish.

It’s been quite some time since I last saw a fish.

It had been a year since I became an Alraune—four years in real time—so I hadn’t seen a fish in all that time.

Back when I was human, I liked fish too.
As a high school girl, my favorite was salt-grilled fish.
And sashimi as well. Soy sauce paired perfectly with it.

Anyway, fish really is delicious……!


Hey, Mr. Fish.
Would you be so kind as to dance with me?

An underwater dance.

It’s my first time in the water, so I’m feeling a bit nervous, but I would be most delighted if you’d take my hand.


But Mr. Fish didn’t even glance my way.

It seems land plants weren’t worth their attention.
Perhaps without gills, I wasn’t considered one of its kind.

Or could it be that they’re wary because I might try to reel them in with my vines?
How rude.
All I was doing was looking for a dance partner.
In that case, I suppose I’ll have to send out formal invitations myself.

I scattered poisonous pollen into the water.

It got swept along by the current, but luckily, a few fish kindly accepted my invitation.

Ah, the discerning fish… truly can tell.
They’re all nicely plump and such handsome little fish, aren’t they?


Perhaps they were so overwhelmed with joy at being invited by me that they passed out. As the fish floated to the surface, I gently cradled them with my vines.

No need to be shy, handsome fish. I’ll take the lead.
The underwater ball is about to begin.


Chomp.

Mm, fish is delicious!
I can’t really taste them, but it’s been a while since I’ve had any nutrition!
Salt-grilled fish is nice, but really, the best way to eat fish is fresh and raw.

As I happily munched away at my dancing fish, the water current suddenly grew stronger.


W-what’s going on!?
Could there be a waterfall downstream, making the flow faster?

Just as I started panicking, I thought I saw a tiny light on the water’s surface.
And then, the next moment, my body suddenly floated upward as if I’d collided with something.

I thought I’d smashed into a rock.
After all, my whole body, bucket and all, had been blown into the air.


I was thrown from the water, flying straight toward the riverbank.

I landed safely using my vines.
That was close.
If the timing had been off even a little, I would’ve been slammed straight into the ground.


Still, that was surprising.
Did I hit something in the river and get flung out by the momentum?
But strangely, my body doesn’t hurt at all.

It was almost like a mysterious current of water shot me upward and out onto land.


What on earth just happened?
As I looked around, my eyes met those of a single frog.


A mottled frog.
And a pretty big one at that. About the size of a car.

It was a frog-type monster, a Flutfrosch.
Could it be that the frog saved me?

No, that seems unlikely.
I mean, it’s a frog.
I didn’t feel like I was rescued by a frog’s tongue.
It felt more like some mysterious current had blown me up onto the riverbank.


But still, the fact that I was safely pulled out of the river like this feels unnatural.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that some special power rescued me.
A stream of water shooting straight into the sky wasn’t exactly normal.
And being carried from the pond into the river without drowning… that felt pretty miraculous too.


Hey, Mr. Frog.

Could it be that you saved me?
Did you use some kind of supernatural power to help me?


If that was the case, then this frog couldn’t be an ordinary frog.

Maybe it was actually a human who was transformed into a frog by magic.

Now that I think about it, the little witch also transformed into a white bird using magic.
So it’s not completely impossible.


Besides, I once read a fairy tale in Japan.
It was about a princess who was saved by a prince turned into a frog.
In a world where magic exists, it wouldn’t be strange for such mysterious stories to be real.

After all, I’ve already experienced something like that once, with White Bird-san.

I couldn’t tell whether this frog is male or female.
But just like White Bird-san, I had a strong feeling that it wasn’t just an ordinary animal.

Hey, Mr. Frog.
Could it be… you’re the Frog Prince?


That’s what I decided to ask Mr. Frog.

***

Author’s Note:

Thank you very much for reading.

Next Time: Embraced by the Prince