It started like any other Thursday.

  Cool air. A sky the color of quiet hope. The slow exhale of a world in between seasons.

  I walked to school with Sugimura, his voice bouncing off the pavement like it had somewhere better to be.

  “She’s a hundred years old, Souta,” he said, too loudly for 7 a.m. “Still in middle school. Fights demons with math. Actual math!”

  I blinked at him. “That’s not how math works.”

  “That’s what makes it genius! She throws hypotenuses like shurikens!”

  I tried to keep a straight face, failed. “You stayed up all night watching anime again, didn’t you?”

  “For art, Souta. For culture.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You’re lucky I haven’t abandoned you for cooler friends.”

  He shot me a grin. “You like me. Admit it. I make your tragic main character energy tolerable.”

  “…Slightly.”

  He bumped my shoulder. “Hey, did you catch the latest episode of Otherworld Civil Servant? Dude literally reincarnated as a tax auditor. I know you love that stupid isekai stuff.”

  “Isekai isn’t stupid,” I muttered.

  He cackled. “It is, and you love it. Don’t act like you haven’t imagined dying dramatically and waking up with a harem and a sword.”

  “…Okay maybe once,” I admitted, lips twitching.

  “Once a day?”

  “Shut up.”

  We kept walking, laughter curling into the morning air. And I let myself feel it—this absurd, warm, ordinary joy. The kind of joy that didn’t come with strings.

  ?　?　?

  School passed like it always did. A blur of half-understood lectures, chalk dust, and occasional dreams behind half-lidded eyes.

  But something about the day felt still. Like the world had hit pause and no one noticed but me.

  Hayasaka passed me a note in homeroom.

  I didn’t open it right away. Let it sit there. A small, folded secret.

  When I finally read it at lunch, it said:

  “Don’t forget to smile today. You look better when you’re not overthinking the oxygen you breathe.”

  I laughed—really laughed. That kind of startled laugh that slips out before your defenses catch it.

  When I glanced across the courtyard, she looked away, pretending she hadn’t been watching.

  But she smiled. And for some reason, that made my heart knock twice in my chest.

  I didn’t know it would be the last note she’d ever give me.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  ?　?　?

  After club, I didn’t go straight home. I wandered. No real reason. Just… didn’t want the day to end.

  The air was cool in that perfect way spring evenings are. Music played low in my earbuds—some old anime ending theme from years ago. It made everything feel like the last episode of a show I didn’t want to stop watching.

  I passed the old arcade Sugimura and I used to haunt. I remembered losing to him twenty-seven times in one afternoon and accusing the machine of emotional bias.

  Then the bookstore—Hayasaka’s hand brushing mine as we both reached for Shadows of Valeria, Volume 3. We’d argued over the main character for an hour. She said he was too broody. I said he was traumatized.

  I almost texted her. But I didn’t. Because I figured there’d be more time.

  Then I turned a corner.

  And time ran out.

  The construction site was bigger up close—scaffolding everywhere, steel beams stacked like toy blocks, cranes looming like skeletons against the sky. I’d seen it from the bus, but this close it looked like a half-finished monument to a future no one asked for.

  There was a narrow side path for pedestrians. Caution tape. Orange cones. Warnings I ignored.

  I pulled out one earbud, the hum of machines replacing the music.

  A shout. I turned—And the sky broke.

  A scream of steel. A crack like God splitting open the world.

  I looked up. A shadow fell. And then the pain began.

  A pipe hit me first—hard and fast and wrong. My shoulder detonated. Nerves howled. I dropped, tried to get up, but my body didn’t listen.

  Another shadow. Concrete this time.

  It didn’t break my ribs. It folded them. Like paper. I felt the snap-slice-stab as one punched through lung.

  I couldn’t scream. Only cough. Thick red gurgled from my mouth. It tasted like iron and endings.

  Then the last one came. The pipe. The big one. The one that ended me.

  I watched it fall.Watched the sky behind it. A sliver of blue. A cloud shaped like a dragon.

  And I thought— 'This isn’t how it happens in isekai.'

  In the stories, death is clean. Sudden. Glorious. You get hit by a truck and wake up in another world with magic and meaning. Not like this. Not with your brain split open and your mouth full of your own blood. Not with your last thought being, 'Please don’t let this be it.'

  But it was.

  I felt myself slip. Out of my body. Out of my name.

  That's how I died with my eyes open.

  A boy who finally learned how to live,

  Only to die in the moment he wanted to stay.

  △▼△▼△▼△

  He let out a slow, tired sigh as he reached the end of his story. His fingers twitched, like they still wanted to keep talking even though his mouth had stopped.

  "...And that’s it, I guess," he muttered, eyes on the fire in front of him. "You wanted a story. There’s your story."

  There was a long pause—long enough for the wind to brush past the trees and rustle the flames like they were whispering secrets no one wanted to say aloud.

  "...Souta," a soft voice broke the silence. The navy-haired girl across from him hugged her knees, frowning gently. "I… I didn’t really get all of it. But… it sounded really sad."

  He didn’t look at her. Just poked the campfire with a stick and shrugged. “You asked.”

  The boy sitting beside her leaned back on one hand, his flame-orange eyes reflecting the firelight like burning glass. His crimson hair was a mess, wild like he couldn’t be bothered to brush it. He clicked his tongue and gave a crooked smile.

  “Well, damn. That wasn’t exactly bedtime story material.”

  “You asked,” Souta repeated flatly.

  “I thought you were gonna say you stole a pie or something. Not…” He trailed off, then scratched the back of his head. “Okay, yeah. That was heavy.”

  Silence again. The elf was the last to speak.

  She sat cross-legged, hair the pale silver of starlight, skin almost porcelain in the moonlight, and her eyes—deep violet, like twilight that never ends—watched him with something close to sorrow.

  “Even if I don’t understand all the pieces,” she said quietly, “I think I know what kind of person lived that story. You endured a lot. Lost a lot.”

  “I didn’t tell it for pity.”

  “I know,” she said. “You told it because we asked.”

  He finally looked up. The fire cracked between them.

  The crimson-haired boy folded his arms, exhaling hard through his nose. “Still. That kind of pain—it doesn’t just come from nowhere. You lived through something real, Souta. And it made you the kind of guy who you are now.”

  “Dramatic way of saying I’m boring.”

  “Dramatic? Me?” The boy grinned. “You're the one dropping trauma bombs like a brooding knight.”

  Souta rolled his eyes, but he didn’t disagree.

  The elf tilted her head. “It wasn’t just a story, was it?”

  Souta looked at her. “Does it matter?”

  “No,” she said. “But I’m glad you shared it anyway.”

  He leaned back, letting the night settle into his bones. The stars blinked high above, indifferent and beautiful.

  They didn’t know his world.

  But they were listening. And maybe, for now, that was enough.

  End of Prologue 2, Minami.