The Rabbit Hole (part 2: Nobody's hero)

He glanced one more time at Lilith's door before heading to his own room, wondering what tomorrow would bring in this strange new reality they were both navigating, step by uncertain step.

But sleep proved elusive that night. After hours of tossing and turning, tangling himself in sheets that felt increasingly like a straightjacket, Owen found himself wide awake at 2 AM. His mind refused to shut down, instead replaying their argument on an endless loop—the way Lilith's expression had shifted when he'd snapped at her, that momentary crack in her regal composure revealing something raw underneath. For someone who always seemed so composed, there had been a flicker of something genuine in her eyes. Vulnerability? Hurt? Or maybe just the universal frustration of dealing with someone as stubbornly skeptical as him.

He rolled onto his back, glaring at the ceiling as if it were personally responsible for his insomnia. The shadows played across the popcorn texture, forming patterns that his exhausted brain tried to decipher like some cosmic Rorschach test. But instead of finding answers, he only encountered more questions—ones he'd been deliberately avoiding since Lilith's arrival:

What if she wasn't just delusional?
What if her world really was crumbling, and she genuinely believed he could help?
And most terrifying of all... what if he actually started believing her?

"This is ridiculous," he muttered to the empty room, the words hanging in the darkness like a half-hearted defense.

With a defeated groan, Owen reached for his phone on the nightstand. If nothing else, mindless scrolling might bore him into unconsciousness. But instead of opening his usual social media apps, his fingers seemed to move of their own accord, typing two words into the search bar before his common sense could intervene: "isekai reincarnation."

The results flooded his screen instantly—forums, Reddix threads, fanfiction sites, and even scholarly articles analyzing the cultural phenomenon. Owen hesitated, his thumb hovering over the screen like it was poised above a detonator. After a moment of internal debate that felt more significant than it should have, he clicked on a thread titled "What Would You Do If You Got Summoned to Another World?"

At first, the responses were exactly what he expected—digital eye-roll material:

"Obviously I'd become OP and rule everything!"
"I'd romance every waifu in sight lol."
"Nah, I'd stay here. Real life > fantasy BS."

But as he scrolled deeper, venturing past the surface-level responses, the tone shifted. Some users wrote earnestly about how they'd jump at the chance to leave behind mundane lives for something extraordinary. Others debated the ethics of abandoning Earth entirely. One post in particular caught his eye:

u/DreamWalker123:
Honestly, if some glowing-haired princess showed up claiming I was destined to save her dying world, I'd probably laugh in her face too. But then I'd wonder... what if it was real? What if my choices mattered somewhere else? Like, sure, this world sucks sometimes, but isn't that why we dream of better ones?

Owen stared at the screen, the words resonating within him like a tuning fork struck against his ribcage. He scrolled further, clicking through links with increasing urgency until he stumbled onto a subreddix called r/IsekaiRealityCheck. Unlike the other forums filled with fantasy scenarios, this one was populated with people genuinely questioning whether alternate worlds could exist—not as fiction, but as potential reality.

One thread stood out from the rest: "How do you know if your 'Isekai experience' is legit?"

The top comment made his stomach twist:

u/ShadowSeeker99:
Look, I don't have proof aliens or magic are real, but think about it—if someone came to you saying your death would save millions, wouldn't you at least consider it? Not saying I believe any of this stuff, but... what if?

Owen's chest tightened like someone had wrapped invisible bands around his ribs. He closed the app with a forceful tap, tossing his phone onto the bed as if it had suddenly become radioactive. This was beyond ridiculous. He wasn't some anime protagonist with a destiny. He was just Owen Kyokai—a guy who worked part-time at a convenience store, struggled to keep his stellar grades, and whose biggest adventure to date had been navigating Tokyo's subway system during rush hour.

And yet...

The next morning, Owen moved through the apartment like a ghost, deliberately avoiding Lilith as much as possible in a space that suddenly felt far too small for two people. She noticed, of course; she always did, those crimson eyes missing nothing. But instead of confronting him directly, she simply followed his orbit silently, her presence hovering around him like an unspoken question mark.

It wasn't until lunchtime that she finally broke through his carefully constructed wall of silence. They were sitting on the school roof—a strategic retreat by Owen to escape both the crowded cafeteria and Hikaru's conspiracy theories—when Lilith set down her chopsticks and fixed him with a gaze that felt like it could peel away layers of pretense.

"You've been researching," she said, her voice neither accusatory nor triumphant, just matter-of-fact.

Owen froze mid-bite, half a sandwich suspended between plate and mouth like a bridge to nowhere. "What makes you say that?"

She tilted her head slightly, a gesture he'd come to recognize as her processing human complexity. "Your energy has changed. You're... curious now. Before, you dismissed everything outright. Now..." She paused, seeming to weigh her words carefully. "Now, you're unsure."

Owen scowled, cramming the sandwich into his mouth with more force than necessary, buying time to compose a response that wasn't a complete denial. "So what if I am?" he said finally, words muffled by bread and frustration. "It doesn't mean anything. Just because I looked something up doesn't mean I believe it."

Lilith's lips curved into a faint smile, the expression softer than her usual regal mask. "Denial is understandable. Even heroes need time to accept their roles."

"Stop calling me that," Owen snapped, though the edge in his voice had dulled, like a knife that had been used to cut too many things it wasn't designed for. "I'm not your hero. I'm nobody's hero."

Her gaze sharpened then, those crimson eyes cutting through his defenses like they were made of tissue paper. "Then tell me, Owen Kyokai—if you truly believe that, why does the idea unsettle you so much?"

Owen opened his mouth to argue but found his arsenal of snark suddenly depleted. Instead, he stared at her, his thoughts swirling like storm clouds before a downpour. Why did it bother him so much? Was it because her claims challenged everything he thought he knew about reality? Or was it because, buried deep beneath layers of skepticism and sarcasm, a small part of him wanted to believe there was something more?

As if the universe itself had a perverse sense of timing, Hikaru appeared that afternoon, bursting into the library where Owen had retreated in hopes of finding some peace. His friend clutched his laptop like it contained the nuclear launch codes, eyes wide behind his glasses.

"Guys!" he exclaimed, plopping down beside Owen and Lilith at their study table, ignoring the murderous glares from nearby students. "You're never gonna believe this!"

Owen groaned, his forehead making intimate contact with his textbook. "If it involves UFOs, secret societies, or anything with the word 'conspiracy' attached to it, I really, really don't want to hear it."

Hikaru ignored him completely, opening his laptop with the dramatic flair of a magician revealing his greatest trick. "Check this out. There's been a spike in reports of mysterious lights appearing over Tokyo. People are saying it's connected to ancient prophecies or something."

Owen's head snapped up, his gaze automatically shooting to Lilith, whose expression remained perfectly neutral. Too neutral. The kind of neutral that took actual effort to maintain.

"Coincidence," Owen muttered, though the word tasted hollow even to him. "Cities have weird weather patterns all the time. Light pollution, airplane reflections, mass hysteria..."

Hikaru shook his head so vigorously his glasses nearly flew off. "Nope. These aren't natural. Look!" He spun the laptop around, revealing grainy photos of glowing orbs hovering above Tokyo's skyline. Beneath the images, comments speculated wildly about portals, summoning rituals, and—of course—aliens.

Lilith leaned closer, studying the photos with an intensity that made Owen's stomach knot. "Interesting," she murmured, her fingertip hovering just above the screen. "These disturbances resemble breaches in dimensional barriers."

"See?!" Hikaru crowed triumphantly, practically bouncing in his seat. "Even Princess agrees! This is basically confirmation!"

Owen buried his face in his hands, feeling the last threads of his normal life unraveling around him. "This can't be happening," he groaned, the words muffled by his palms but the sentiment crystal clear.

But even as he denied it, a part of him—the part that had stayed up until 3 AM reading about parallel worlds—whispered that maybe, just maybe, it could.