Are you familiar with the creature known as the ostrich?

With a colossal body easily exceeding two meters and the ability to run at 60 km/h, they also have plenty of stamina. They possess such overwhelming physical performance that they can maintain their top speed for about an hour. What’s more, they aren’t just fast; their eyesight is also astounding, allowing them to see as far as five kilometers away. Their flight muscles have atrophied, so they cannot fly, but one could say they have specs truly befitting a champion of the land.

While their physical performance is astonishing, that is not the ostriches’ greatest strength.

That’s right: their recovery and immune systems.

Their regenerative power is so incredible that they can make a full recovery even from an injury so deep the bone is visible. In a human’s case, an injury that would be fatal without stitches will heal up completely after just a few weeks. And their immune system is strong enough to let them heal even with an open wound. Perhaps because their immunity is too high, they can even produce antibodies for the coronavirus that has been rampaging across the world in recent years and be perfectly fine. A grown ostrich rarely dies; that’s the secret right there.

Now, for all the amazing specs these ostriches have, they possess one single flaw that ruins all of these advantages.

“That’s right, they’re dumber than a box of rocks.”

Forgetting everything after taking three steps is just the beginning; they can’t remember the faces of their own flock members, and of course, they can’t remember their own children’s faces either. The moment two flocks pass each other, even if their members get all mixed up, no one questions it. In fact, they’ll proudly puff out their chests as if to say, “We’ve had these members from the start, haven’t we?” If someone starts running, they just follow on pure instinct, but after a few steps, their minds go blank. Having tossed away even a fresh canvas, no one knows why they started running in the first place. To top it all off, even if a person climbs on their back, they just get startled for a moment. They immediately cast the fact that a person was on them into the distant past of oblivion and casually go on with their lives.

So, as I mentioned earlier, they have phenomenal eyesight, but if I tell you that their brain is smaller than one of their eyeballs, I think you’ll understand just how dumb they are.

A tragic creature that traded its intelligence for physical abilities that could be called the strongest. That is the ostrich.

Now then, let’s get back to the story.

This is a different world from the one those ostriches live in; a place you would call an “otherworld.” While it has some similarities to your “Earth,” it is a world where, besides humans, there are races like elves and dwarves, and where mysterious things like magic and monsters exist.

In such a mysterious otherworld, a certain ostrich was born.

Or perhaps I should say, an otherworldly ostrich; a being that seems to be a mix of an ostrich and a human. In a word, an “Ostrich Beast-kin.” A being that inherited the foolishness of an ostrich, with a half-human, half-beast body that dashes across the land. Their big, round, adorable eyes are their charm point.

Among them, there was one special individual. An “Ostrich Beast-kin” with memories of a past life, possessing the soul of a human who was born and raised on “Earth,” where the “ostrich” that became their origin existed, let out its first cry.

Now then, what kind of life—no, what kind of “ostrich life”—will “she” lead? Shall we all observe her together?

◇◆◇◆◇

“…Crap. This is so rough, I think I might be hearing things.”

“You okay?” “What’s wrong?” “Hungry?”

“Ah, yeah, it’s nothing. Look, I’m fine now, so go ahead and rest.”

“Okay!” came the chorus.

Me? I’m someone who was a man in my past life. My race was human, of course.

I am, probably, maybe, a female Ostrich Beast-kin who regained her memories around the age of five. Well, I don’t really know if I was truly five. You see, even as beast-kin, ostriches are idiots. No matter how much you teach them, it’s normal for them to be unable to remember even what happened yesterday, let alone the concept of years. The best I could do was repeatedly hammer into their brains the concept that “when the sun is out, it’s ‘morning,’ and when it’s dark, it’s ‘night’”—and even then, they forget about eighty percent of the time. There’s no way they’d know how many years ago something was.

That, of course, includes me before my memories returned. I’m managing somehow now, but I don’t have a single fragment of memory from before my past life memories came back. It’s just that my level of maturity when I regained my memories was about the same as a female individual born five years prior, so… I’m probably fifteen right now! That’s how I’m counting. It’s rough, but hey, I’m an ostrich, so I gotta be loose with these things~. Taking it easy is the most important thing in life, y’know!

And as for why I remembered my past life…

Back then, just like the other Ostrich Beast-kin, my incredibly stupid self-tripped on something and slammed my head right into the ground. I guess I hit it in just the right spot, because I was lucky enough to remember my past memories. Well, normally that would be a reason to celebrate, but… as expected, ostriches were in a league of their own.

The external injury healed right away thanks to my innate recovery ability, but my brain was not fine at all.

A normal ostrich brain is the size of a walnut, after all. Even if I became a beast-kin, my brain’s smallness didn’t change that much. I mean, it’s not so empty that it’d rattle if you shook my head vigorously, but considering their usual intelligence, it’s definitely small. What do you think happens when you shove a human’s entire life—memories from birth to death—into such a minuscule brain?

That’s right, it goes kaboom.

It couldn’t handle the sheer volume of information and just exploded. My brain was so small, the sound was probably a tiny little pop, but in any case, my brain was blown to bits. For any other bird-type beast-kin, no, for any other living creature, that would’ve been the end. But I’m an ostrich, with a cheat-level healing factor. With an incomprehensibly amazing regenerative ability, it began to rebuild.

I received a divine word from the Marie Antoinette in my brain?, “If you don’t have enough brain capacity, why not just build a bigger one?” and so the parade of hellish regeneration began. My brain would regenerate a little bigger than before, but it still couldn’t take it and would explode. Learning from that failure, it would regenerate a little bigger, but it still wasn’t big enough and would explode.

Explode and regenerate. A cycle of exploding and regenerating. As my brain grew larger, for some reason my body grew too. While the basic Ostrich Beast-kin is about the size of a toddler, I gained a certain amount of height.

Well, after about half a year of that… I finally obtained a human-level brain and was resurrected as a perfect, flawless Ostrich Beast-kin with the memories and thought processes of my past life!

Yes! The greatest weakness of the ostrich, its weak mind! I have overcome it!

Of course, that’s not all! Perhaps my body evolved to match my brain size, because I went from a little chibi, the normal size for an Ostrich Beast-kin, to about the size of a young girl. My feathers also changed from a mix of brown with black spots to a beautiful coat of pure black and white. In Earth ostrich terms, I transformed from the juvenile colors to the adult colors!

Well, it would’ve been great if it ended there, but…

“Haaaaaaaaaaaaah…”

“What’s wrong?” “What’s wrong?” “Are ya hungry?”

“Food?” “Food!” “It’s food!”

“Food! Food!”

My deep sigh causes my flock to swarm me all at once to see what’s wrong. I just told them, “I’m fine, so you can rest,” but they’ve gathered again. And what’s more, at first they seemed worried, but because someone said “Food?” the flock’s policy has now been unofficially decided that we’re going to get food. Yes, I’m the only one who became the Great, Perfect, Max-Power-Brain Ostrich Beast-kin; everyone else is an idiot.

The ostriches older than me, the children, and the ones my age. They all have the form of a mix between an ostrich and a human, yet they are all incredibly stupid. They seem to have enough of a brain to use a simple language, but… they’re on the level of a three-year-old at best. No, that might be rude to His Highness the Three-Year-Old.

Well, in short, ever since I got my memories back, I’ve been in endless childcare mode. I have to manage over three hundred toddlers, a number that is clearly beyond any single person’s capacity. I’m the sole headmistress of a sweatshop nursery!

“It’s not food, it’s nothing! Besides, didn’t we just eat?”

“We ate?” “We ate!”

“What?”

“Food?” “It’s food!”

“Food! Food!”

“…”

This is hopeless.

To be honest, I’ve tried to run away several times when I just couldn’t take it anymore. Even raising a single child is a huge amount of work and takes a tremendous mental toll. For me, who had never raised a child, even in my past life, raising a large number of them was impossible in many ways, and these kids, who are basically three-year-olds, have no civilization. I had to be a nursery school teacher while living a hand-to-mouth hunting life.

And what’s more, this is an otherworld with crazy creatures like us, so this whole area is full of nothing but monsters. When was the last time I had a proper night’s sleep?

In other words, the stress of childcare, the stress of being hunted down myself if I let my guard down, and the fact that I can’t even have a proper conversation with any of them if I want to talk to someone. There were other reasons, but tormented mainly by these two, I went a little crazy and abandoned the flock to run away.

However, you must not underestimate the specs of these ostriches. The trait of following anyone who starts running didn’t seem to change one bit when they became beast-kin.

They must have understood on an instinctual level that I was the smartest in the flock, and before I knew it, they had formed a society with me at the top, something like a nursery school class. They had acquired the habit of following me, their teacher, wherever I went.

“And that’s why they follow me… they always, always follow me…”

“? You call~?”

“I did not.”

It’s no good during the day, of course, and even if I try to sneak out at night, there’s always someone in the flock awake, probably because of their strong wild instincts. If that one thinks it’s a night walk and follows me, everyone else automatically follows too.

And that’s just the beginning. Even if I manage to create some distance, their good eyes somehow find me, and on top of that, they’re fast, so there’s nothing I can do. To make matters worse, members of other flocks mistake us for their own and join in. The numbers just keep growing.

It started with just a dozen or so, but now it’s well over three digits…

With normal ostriches, the strongest male in the flock supposedly stands at the top, but perhaps because they became beast-kin, their original nature became extremely gentle. I’ve never seen Ostrich Beast-kin fight amongst themselves. They’re all basically smiling, and they have a very strong sense of camaraderie, so they’ve built a cooperative community. The fact that I was protected by this flock for the half-year I was bedridden is thanks to that.

Well, the place we’re in now—I’m calling it the ‘Highlands’ for convenience—is seriously like a demonic, magical landscape. I’ve gained physical abilities like a superhero compared to my past life, but there are plenty of opponents out there who could trample us even if we ganged up on them. I guess it was inevitable that only the ones who get along with their own kind survived.

Well, at first, to repay that debt, I would give them advice or cook for them (on the level of just grilling stuff), but… that was a mistake. My status among them rose and rose, and they were conditioned to think, “If we listen to her, the hunt goes well!” and, “If we give her food, she gives us even tastier food!” and before I knew it, I had become the leader of the flock.

…I’m a female, y’know? Is that alright? Ain’t this stuff normally done by a male? I guess it must be fine… Actually, can these guys even tell the difference between male and female…? Well, they didn’t seem to mess it up during breeding season, so I guess that part’s okay.

“…Right, we should probably get moving before we become a target. Hey, you lot! We’re going to get food. We just ate, so we’ll make it preserved food and stockpile it. It’s a pain, but even you guys can do simple tasks, right? Or rather, can you please do them? For me? Don’t just dump all the work on your teacher, okay?”

“Food!?” “Food!”

“It’s fooood!!!”

“Yes, yes, it’s food. C’mon, follow me!”

“Yaaay!!!”

Yes, yes, so energetic.

Still, what is this world, I wonder? For now, the fact that there are incomprehensible beings like us makes it certain that it’s another world. On top of that, the animals we often hunt for food are teeming with creatures I’ve never seen on Earth.

No matter how you look at it, this can’t be the Earth where I lived as a human.

There are delicious-when-grilled worms dozens of meters long that pop out of the ground, and birds that fly around at speeds that are a bit hard to follow even with our ostrich eyes. There are also plenty of things that would be classified as ‘monsters’ in games or anime, y’know. If this stuff were on Earth, it’d be a huge panic. …Well, if there were Ostrich Beast-kin, that’d cause a huge panic too, I guess.

And what else… I once thought a flock child was playing with something, but it turned out they were just stomping on a slime. It had a weird smell, so I judged it as poisonous and we didn’t eat it.

Anyway, these monsters are all opponents I could never have hoped to beat back when I was just a human. Only by combining the body of a physical elite, the ostrich, with the intelligence I regained from my past life can I finally beat a number of opponents I can count on one hand. The number we can beat by surrounding them as a flock is about forty percent of the total. The rest are opponents we can only run from. Well, sometimes their specs are too different and we can’t escape without casualties. But yeah, this plateau we live on, like a savanna, is truly a demonic landscape. It’s a difficult environment even for an ostrich, or rather, it’s an environment where we can only survive because we are ostriches.

Perhaps because of this place, I have never met any intelligent life forms other than us Ostrich Beast-kin. Beast-kin like us? Bird-kin? The fact that we exist makes me think there must be other beast-kin based on other species, but I haven’t even found a trace of them.

It would be nice if I could fly with these, which have become wings instead of hands, though.

Thinking such thoughts, I look at my own wings. The hands I was used to as a human are already gone, and in their place is a mass of feathers I’ve gotten used to handling. Our Ostrich Beast-kin arms are a lot like a harpy’s. From the upper arm down, it’s a bird, but up to the shoulder, it’s human. Well, being an ostrich, they’re not such slender, weak arms, you know? They’re very strong.

At first, I was bewildered trying to use them, but now I can do simple tasks. Using the part that would be the elbow on a human and the tips of my wings, I can make and use simple tools. But their original purpose wasn’t for gaining lift, but for retaining heat, for support when changing direction, and for protecting the body from static electricity. In exchange for losing the ability to fly, I’ve gained a certain degree of defense and an amazing ability to adapt to the environment. Well, that’s the same as a normal ostrich.

If only there were other races. No, if only there was someone I could have a proper conversation with…

These guys following me as I run across the Highlands, these guys who have probably already forgotten why they’re running, are my lovable idiots. Their nature is gentle and good-natured, and though a conversation is impossible, their compassion for their comrades is extremely strong. If you get three digits’ worth of humans together, some kind of trouble is bound to happen, but with these guys, nothing would change whether you gathered four digits or five.

I don’t particularly dislike being with them, and maybe because of my Ostrich Beast-kin blood, the time we spend running together brings peace to my heart. I can tell they adore me as the leader of the flock, which makes me feel like I should live up to that. In this harsh environment, numbers are power, so I don’t care how much our numbers increase, but… I do constantly wish they’d get just a little bit smarter.

A ‘conversation’! I want to have a ‘conversation’…! At least with someone who doesn’t let what we were just talking about vanish from their head! Someone who will properly stick with the same topic for more than a minute! Please! I’m begging you!

Have I been praying like this to a god who may or may not exist for nearly ten years now…? Am I going to end my life as their leader just like this?

My body may be female, but my heart and soul are that of a human who lived on Earth. My ‘desire’ doesn’t react to the males of my species, or even the females. We are beast-kin, but perhaps because we’ve inherited many elements from ostriches, we have a breeding season, and we are oviparous. The females who seem to be my age have found mates and given birth? They’ve laid eggs, but I haven’t had any of that at all. Well, these guys look like toddlers, and their minds are too childish… yeah… They’re not exactly romance material, are they?

Well, I don’t really care about that. I’ll just treat it like I’m married to the position of ‘Flock Leader,’ like some queen of an island nation. Maybe because I’m seen as a member of the same species but somehow different, no one’s tried any courting behavior? on me, either.

Just as I was forcibly switching my mood to “Guess I’ll enjoy the carefree single life,” a voice rises from one of the guys running to my right rear. This isn’t a report to me, but more of a “I found something and couldn’t help but shout.” There’s no way these lovable idiots could perform a group action; this is one of the risk management behaviors ingrained in their instincts.

When I turn my face in that direction… I see a cloud of dust rising. Seeing a dust cloud on this highland means there’s a high probability that some kind of battle is taking place. This time, since I can see a black shadow at the source of the smoke, there’s no doubt.

“If it’s our own kind, we rescue them. If it’s a fight between monsters… we reap the spoils.”

A cloud of dust rising at a distance just barely visible with an ostrich’s eyes. From that, I can infer that a large creature, or a herd, is moving. And at the same time, considering the current size of our flock… it’s a size we can more than handle.

As the flock gets larger, so does the amount of food we need, and though the proportion is small, we have children who will carry the next generation. Maintaining our food supply is necessary. If they charge in without listening to my instructions, we might get a few injured, but it’s by no means a size we can’t hunt. Besides, the fact that they’re raising a large dust cloud gives me a certain degree of understanding of what kind of opponent they are. This will not be a difficult ‘hunt’.

It sounds a bit heartless, but even if we get some injured, they’re Ostrich Beast-kin who’ll be fully recovered in a few weeks. The calories needed for recovery will increase slightly, but that’s practically no cost. This highland is harsh, but it’s also a place rich in nature. As long as we’re careful about opponents we can’t beat, there are hunting grounds everywhere.

Right, now that it’s decided, shall we go ‘do’ this?

“Alright, you lot! We’re going over there! That way! A hunt! C’mon, answer me!”

“Okay!!!”

I spread my wings and lean my whole body forward. Maintaining my speed, I change direction and set a course for the source of the dust cloud. Now then, I’d be happy if it’s a big one…!

Just a moment in my ordinary, everyday life. Five minutes until the daily routine I thought would never change until I died came to an end. No, let me rephrase that. Five minutes until I encounter a proper intelligent life-form! It’s been ten years since I’ve seen a human!!!