The Awakening - Part 1

"It hurts..."

Yeah, it’s actually not that complicated. A strange world I appear in every time I fall asleep, filled with crazy people who have even crazier nicknames, all living together in a rundown inn they dare to call a guild. No, of course it’s complicated! I still can’t make sense of anything that happened yesterday… or today… my sense of time is completely messed up.

Why me?

I just want to believe it was all a dream. I’m just a normal guy, so normal it’s boring.

Who the hell came up with this story? Did someone drug me, and I hallucinated everything? Was I part of a hidden-camera TV show on national television?

No, seriously… someone explain this to me. You, who have witnessed the absurdity of my situation, must have a better idea of what’s going on, right?

Minutes passed as I refused to get out of bed. Outside, the sky was dim, indicating it was early morning, and the clock confirmed it—6 a.m.

I slept for 20 hours.

Gritting my teeth, I thought about how ridiculous that statement was. If the clock on the bedside table wasn’t lying, it meant that at least 20 hours had passed since I went to sleep—almost a whole day. How can anyone sleep for that long?

"It really hurts..."

The sharp pain on my face convinced me it wasn’t a dream. And if that wasn’t enough, all I had to do was look at the bloodstains on my pillow and sheets. That’s right—the undeniable proof that the wound I was given, as well as everything that happened yesterday, was real.

I walked over to the bathroom mirror to clean my face. A thin red line stretched across my lips and reached the tip of my nose.

Images of the exact moment the twin-tailed girl swung the knife flashed through my mind.

She clearly knew this was going to happen.

That’s what she meant when she said I’d realize it when I woke up.

The strange thing about all this is that I could’ve sworn I cleaned off the blood before going to sleep. The only explanation I can come up with is that since my real body is asleep, it’s impossible for me to move it, no matter how much I try on the other side.

At least now I know that any wounds I get in that world also appear here. I should assume the same happens in reverse.

Wait…

That’s dangerous!

If that’s true, it means I can’t move my body in the other world because it’s asleep while I’m awake in reality… What the hell… That’s ridiculous! Is this some kind of joke? If something were to happen to my body over there, I wouldn’t be able to do anything to stop it. If someone from that guild of idiots decided to mess with me…

The image of the twin-tailed lunatic popped into my head.

“Grrrrrr…”

Ugh, forget it. It’s useless to panic over this right now. Alright, let’s calm down. There’s still a lot I don’t understand. First, I should talk to them properly when I go to sleep tonight. If they really wanted to do something to me, they wouldn’t have bothered giving me a room to spend the night, so for now, my body should be safe.

“Gr… ggrrrr… grrrrrrrr……”

I hate this. Even though my body feels fresh as a lettuce, my mind is completely drained. It’s a weird sensation—like I haven’t slept at all, yet I don’t feel any physical exhaustion.

“Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!”

It’s so loud…

As if shattering all the tension in the air, my stomach kept letting out fierce growls of hunger, sounding like an angry beast grumbling and protesting.

Now that I think about it, I haven’t eaten anything since yesterday. With everything that happened, I didn’t even have time to think about my stomach.

I should take this time to cook something and relax.

Alright, that’s my plan for the morning.

With that new resolve in mind and a raging hunger in my gut, I immediately rushed to the kitchen.

Let’s just say that, from that moment on, nothing noteworthy happened for the rest of my morning.