The transition was a jagged pill to swallow. One moment, I was standing at the mouth of death, staring down the grill of a speeding truck; the next, I was teleported to the shores of this mysterious island. My brain was still trying to process the 'glitch' when a voice cut through the sound of the waves from my left.
"Akiro! You're awake? Oh my..."
I turned, squinting against the sun, and found myself staring at our school librarian, Miss Yurin Nishimya. She looked disheveled but relieved.
"Thank God," she breathed, clutching her hands to her chest. "I thought I was alone here. And... what exactly did you mean by 'OMH'? It's 'OMG,' isn't it?"
I didn't even hesitate. In this strange new reality, my true colors were the only thing I had left. "OMG is for normal people, Miss Yurin. OMH is for me. It means: Oh! My! Harem!"
She stared at me for a beat before breaking into a surprised laugh. "Ha! Ha! Ha! Oh my! You really are an overwhelming harem fan, aren't you? But... jokes aside, what is happening to us? Where are we exactly? Do you have any clue?"
I stood up, brushing the sand from my pants. "Isn't it obvious, Ma'am? Something Isekai happened to us. Maybe we killed someone and this is the consequence... or maybe someone killed us and this is what comes after."
Miss Yurin's eyes went wide. "Uh? What? I killed someone...?"
"I mean, it's either the karmic debt of a crime, or it's the 'Heaven' you get after a sudden exit from the living," I explained, leaning into the tropes I knew by heart.
"What?! That's ridiculous," she stammered, shaking her head. "I was just finishing my lunch in the school faculty room, and suddenly I was here. That's all I know."
"Okay, so it's definitely an Isekai-style incident," I muttered, more to myself than to her.
Miss Yurin checked her wrist, her expression tightening as she looked at her watch. "Look, time is running by. It's 1:00 PM already. We can't just stand on the beach forever."
I frowned, the salt air suddenly feeling colder. "Wait... that doesn't make sense. The time in our past world is different than here. It was early morning when I was teleported."
Miss Yurin shook her head, her gaze fixed on the horizon. "Actually, after I reached this shore, I set my watch manually. I adjusted it for when the sun was directly overhead—high noon. According to that, I've been here for at least an hour."
"So you arrived an hour before me?" I stepped closer, my mind racing through the tropes. "Wait a minute... you said you were eating lunch in the school. You liar! Tell me who the real victim is here!"
She looked at me, genuinely astonished by my sudden outburst. "Oh, I'm telling the truth, Akiro. It's... it's complicated."
She sat back on a piece of driftwood, her shoulders slumping. "Actually, I fell asleep in the toilet. When I woke up, the school was already locked up for the night. I realized it was around 9:00 PM, and since I hadn't eaten anything since noon, I snuck into the teacher's room to eat my packed lunch. I was sitting there, reading a novel... and then I was just here."
I stared at her. If she was taken at 9:00 AM and I was taken in the morning, but she arrived on the island before me, then the "bridge" between our world and this one is completely broken. We aren't just in a different place. We're in a different flow of time entirely.
I didn't bother asking about the "rumors" she mentioned. I already knew what people said behind my back—that I was a mischievous creep, a guy who didn't know how to behave around girls. Let them think what they want. In their world, I was a background character with a bad reputation. In this world? I was the protagonist.
As we walked, my eyes drifted toward Miss Nishimya. Up close, without the dusty shelves of the library between us, she was actually... striking. She had vibrant red hair tied into a long ponytail that swayed with every step, and her eyes were a deep, intelligent purple. Her rosy cheeks and the way her legs moved through the sand were hard to ignore. It was the kind of character design that fueled my inner fire.
"Isekai Unleashed!" I screamed internally.
"What? What happened?" she asked, startled by my sudden change in expression.
"Oh, nothing," I said, a grin tugging at the corners of my mouth. "I'm just getting excited about being an Isekai character."
She let out a soft, melodic laugh. "Ooh, so I'm an Isekai character too?"
"Yeah," I replied, looking her in the eye. "And a top-tier one, too."
Her blush deepened, matching her hair. "And you... you can call me Yurin-sama."
"Okay, Yurin-sama," I chuckled.
We continued our trek, wandering along the seemingly endless shoreline. We spent the next half hour scanning the horizon and the edge of the jungle, but the island remained stubbornly empty. No footprints, no smoke from a distant fire—just the two of us and the rhythm of the waves.
The sound reached us before we saw it—a deep, rhythmic thrumming that vibrated through the humid air. "Do you hear that?" I asked, coming to a halt.
Yurin-sama nodded, her red ponytail swaying. "It sounds like... falling water."
We turned away from the shoreline and pushed into the dense greenery, following the roar. After only a minute of fighting through the brush, the jungle opened up into a hidden sanctuary. A pristine waterfall tumbled down a rock face into a wide, shimmering basin.
I took a step forward, but a sudden snap of a branch under my foot made me freeze.
"Akiro!" Yurin-sama wailed, her hands flying to her face.
There, in the center of the basin, was a girl. She was completely naked, the water cascading over her as she looked toward us in stunned silence.
"Who are you?" we both asked at the same time, our voices echoing off the stone walls.
I stood my ground, but then quickly turned my head away. I'm a guy who appreciates the harem life, sure, but seeing a girl like this in reality was a total system shock. My heart was hammering against my ribs.
"It's not a time to explain!" the girl shouted, her voice sharp with panic. "I'm naked! Give me some clothes!"
"Oh! Yes!" Yurin-sama stammered, frantically reaching for her coat. "Akiro, do you have anything?"
"Um, yeah," I muttered, still looking at the trees. "I always keep some spare clothes in my coat pockets for emergencies. You can borrow them."
I handed over a spare garment without looking back. The girl quickly wrapped herself in my and ma'm clothes.
"You can turn back now," she said finally.
I turned, my eyes landing on her. Despite the chaos, the 'Isekai' logic was undeniable. The cast was growing, and the situation was getting more complicated by the seconds.
I turned back to face them, but the moment I did, a sharp, hot pain exploded across my face. My nose and mouth were suddenly bleeding. Miss Yurin and the mystery girl both stood there, looking shocked.
"What happened?!" they both asked in unison.
I wiped a streak of blood from my lip, trying to steady my breathing. "I... I tried to control myself," I managed to say, my voice sounding distant in my own ears. "But it was the first time I'd ever seen a girl wearing those kinds of clothes... and then one of them made me bleed".
Before I could finish, the unknown girl's hand blurred again—SLAP!
Miss Yurin quickly grabbed her arm, stepping between us. "Why did you slap him?! He helped you!"
The girl pointed a trembling finger at me, her eyes flashing with anger. "By his talk, I thought he was some kind of nasty person who thinks those thoughts in his mind! So I slapped him!"
"What?!" Miss Yurin cried out. "His talk is just normal! He feels like a harem fan, that's all!"
"Ok, ok. Boy, stand up—uh, you...!" The girl suddenly grabbed me by the hair, roughly pulling me to my feet. Then, without warning, she slapped me again.
"Why did you slap him again?!" Yurin-sama shouted.
"Don't you understand that he was looking between my legs from his position?!" the girl screamed back.
"But you're the one who made him crash down! Stop it, or I'll slap you too!"
"Ah?! You'll slap me? Just try!"
"Yes, I will!"
The two of them stood squared away, a heated quarrel igniting in the middle of the jungle. I tried to step between them, reaching out with both hands to push them apart—but in the chaos, my luck remained as cursed as ever. My hand slipped, accidentally making contact with the mystery girl's chest.
She froze. Then, with a scream of pure fury, she slapped me one final time. My vision blurred, the world spun, and I slipped into darkness once again, rendered senseless by the sheer weight of both reasons.
Consciousness returned to me in waves, accompanied by the muffled sound of sobbing. I opened my eyes to find Miss Yurin crying hysterically, while the unknown girl sat nearby, watching me with a strange, unreadable smile.
"Guh! Ma'am, it hurts!" I groaned as Miss Yurin suddenly lunged forward, hugging me so tightly I could barely breathe.
"Wah! You're okay! I thought you'd pass away!" she wailed, her tears soaking into my shirt.
I managed to sit up, but as the world stopped spinning, I froze. Right next to me was a freshly dug hole in the sand. "What? A grave? You were planning to bury me while I'm still alive?!"
Miss Yurin stopped hugging me and sniffled, looking embarrassed. "Ahiro, this girl told me that you weren't breathing. She helped me dig this grave using a branch... she's really a monster".
I looked over at the mystery girl. Despite the fact that she had just tried to bury me, I couldn't help but smile, even though her crying had clearly been a bit of an act. "I said, 'What happened?'"
"Ah, I'm so hungry!" the girl interrupted, her stomach letting out a loud growl that was echoed by Miss Yurin's own.
"Okay, Ma'am," I said, standing up and dusting off the sand. "We should head to the beach to hunt for fish. I'll find some vegetarian food for me, too".
The girl finally stopped her theatrical crying and stood up, her expression turning serious as she introduced herself. "I'm Rin Tachibana from Tokyo. And I'm also a vegan. It's irritating because this Ahiro is also a vegan".
Miss Yurin's eyes snapped toward me, her protective instincts flared up again. "So, go away!" she shouted at Rin.
The tropical sun had long since abandoned us, leaving the island to the mercy of a heavy, humid darkness. We moved in a cautious line, the silence of the jungle broken only by the snapping of twigs and our own jagged breathing. I led the way, my fingers tightly interlaced with Rin's. Her hand was small and surprisingly cold, a sharp contrast to the warmth of the day. Behind her, she held fast to Miss Yurin, our line of three linked together by a shared, desperate need for safety.
"We have to stay united for survival," I had told them, trying to sound more like a seasoned Isekai protagonist than a guy who had just been slapped into a coma.
We each gripped a sturdy stick, our only defense against whatever monsters might be lurking in the shadows of the ferns. Rin lean close to me, her voice a soft whisper that barely carried over the rustle of the leaves. "Sorry," she muttered, her earlier hostility replaced by a quiet vulnerability. "I thought you were a bad guy. Let's just... let's just go".
After what felt like hours of navigating the emerald maze, the trees began to thin. The heavy scent of damp earth was replaced by the sharp, salt-tossed spray of the ocean. We stepped out onto the open sand, the vast expanse of the beach laid out before us under a canopy of stars.
Miss Yurin stopped, her breath hitching as she lifted her wrist to check her watch in the pale moonlight. "It's 9:00 PM," she announced, her voice trembling slightly.
The time made no sense. In Tokyo, I had been hit by that truck in the morning. Miss Yurin had arrived after a late-night incident at the school. But here, the moon was high, and the world was indifferent to the clocks we had left behind.
I looked out at the waves, the silver light catching on the foam. The "one-hour" scouting mission had turned into a fight for our lives, and as the reality of the night set in, I realized the rules of this world were far more complex than any manga I had ever read.
"We made it back," I said, though the empty beach offered little comfort. "Now, we just have to survive until morning".
END