"Come back, Shin'ya."
A voice. Distant, unfamiliar, yet somehow warm — like it belonged to someone who had been calling for a very long time.
Shin'ya's eyes snapped open. He sat up, rubbing them slowly.
"What was that voice?" he murmured to himself, staring at the ceiling of his room.
"Shin'ya~!" his mother's voice drifted up from downstairs.
"Coming!"
The morning moved the way all his mornings did – routine, predictable, unremarkable. He washed up, came downstairs to the smell of breakfast already on the table, ate quietly, grabbed his bag and headed to school.
Name: Shin'ya. Age: 14. Grade: 8th.
As for school itself? Nothing worth writing about. Eight hours of lectures, textbooks, and the distant ticking of a clock that never seemed to move fast enough. He came home, had dinner with his family, laughed at something his mother said, and then headed straight to his room.
The door clicked shut behind him.
He changed into his regular clothes, flicked off the light, and dropped onto his bed, landing flat on his back, staring up at the dark ceiling.
A long silence.
He sighed.
"Man… my life's so boring."
The words just hung there in the dark. No dramatic music. No sign from the universe. Just a fourteen year old boy and a ceiling that had nothing interesting to say back.
He pulled his blanket up and closed his eyes.
"Wish I could get isekaied to a fantasy world or something."
Then he went to sleep.
Eight hours later.
Shin'ya woke up.
The ceiling was gone.
In its place — open sky. Blue, vast, completely unfamiliar. He blinked once. Twice. Slowly sat up and looked around.
This was not his room.
This was not his bed.
This was not anywhere he had ever been.
He was outside, on elevated ground, surrounded by the rustling of trees. A dense forest stretched out below him, and beyond it — unmistakable against the horizon sat a medieval town. Stone walls, wooden rooftops, smoke curling lazily from chimneys. Like something straight out of a fantasy novel.
Shin'ya rubbed his eyes one more time.
"Wait a sec—"
He paused.
Then his brain caught up.
"WAIT A SECOND!"
He shot to his feet.
"DID I JUST I GOT ISEKAIED?!"
His heart felt like it was going to burst out of his chest. He spun around, arms wide open, taking in every single detail of this impossible, wonderful, perfect scenery.
"OH BOY, I CAN'T WAIT TO BECOME THE OVERPOWERED ISEKAI PROTAGONIST! AND LOOK THERE'S THE MEDIEVAL TOWN! THE 1800s EUROPEAN AESTHETIC! THIS IS EXACTLY IT! TIME TO SPEEDRUN MY ISEKAI JOURNEY!"
He threw his head back.
"LAL LA LAL LA LAAAA!"
And with absolutely zero hesitation and even less preparation, Shin'ya marched straight into the forest humming to himself, practically skipping, already mentally writing his own protagonist origin story.
It was going great.
Right up until he saw it.
Something stepped out from between the trees ahead of him. It had four legs. It growled. It was distinctly monster-shaped in a way that was hard to describe but impossible to miss. (Even the author isn't entirely sure what it looked like, if we're being honest.)
Shin'ya froze.
Then his eyes lit up.
'OH YES. MY FIRST BATTLE.'
He planted his feet. Raised one hand dramatically toward the creature, fingers spread wide.
'TIME TO OVERPOWER THIS THING USING MY BROKEN MAGIC SKILLS. HERE WE GO.'
He focused. He concentrated. He BELIEVED.
A blue aura began to glow around him brilliant, powerful, the unmistakable radiance of a chosen one awakening to his destiny
except it wasn't real.
It was entirely in his imagination.
The monster did not care about imaginary auras. It lunged.
"Uhhhhh…"
Shin'ya ran.
"WHAT THE HELL DID I DO WRONG?! I DID EVERYTHING RIGHT! I WAS EVEN GLOWING!!! SOMEONE PLEASE OH GOD SEND ME A PARTY MEMBER! A COMPANION! ANYTHING!!!"
His legs pumped hard through the underbrush, branches whipping past his face.
Maybe God heard him.
Maybe the universe has a sense of humor.
Either way a fireball tore through the trees from somewhere to his left, slamming into the monster with a thunderous crack. The creature let out a sound and collapsed. Smoke rose slowly from where it had stood.
Shin'ya skidded to a stop, breathing hard, hands on his knees.
From the trail of smoke, a figure stepped forward. A girl. Calm. Unbothered. Looking at him the way someone looks at a pigeon that just walked into a glass door.
She tilted her head.
"Are you stupid?"
— To Be Continued —