Isekai! Dispatch!

Owen hated his alarm clock. It wasn't the usual "I need five more minutes" kind of hate. No, this was pure, murderous loathing for the mechanical demon screaming into his ear every morning. He slapped the snooze button, missing twice before finally shutting the thing up.

Silence. Sweet, blessed silence.

Or was it, really?

"Owen!" A voice cut through the stillness, half-muffled by his bedroom door. "Owen, wake up! I made your coffee!"

The words drifted through his consciousness like a strange dream—one that hadn't quite existed three months ago. His brain took a moment to recalibrate, to remember that his carefully constructed solitude had been infiltrated. Permanently.

He groaned, pressing his palms against his eyes until colors exploded behind his eyelids.

"Owen!" The voice again, playful this time. A light knock followed. "I know you're awake. Your coffee's getting cold, and I actually got it right this time."

He dragged himself out of bed, bones creaking in protest. The floorboards were cold beneath his feet—winter still clinging stubbornly to the edges of everything, despite the calendar's insistence that spring was coming. He shuffled toward the door, pausing with his hand on the knob.

This was his life now. Not the one he'd planned. Not the one he'd meticulously carved out of routine and solitude.

But somehow, impossibly, it was better.

He opened the door.

The apartment was bathed in the particular light that only exists between seasons—a confused gold that couldn't decide if it was winter-weak or spring-strong. It spilled through the thin curtains, catching dust motes and turning them into tiny constellations that drifted between worlds. The smell of coffee hung in the air—not quite right, but closer than before. Progress.

Lilith stood in front of the counter, arms crossed over a faded t-shirt she'd claimed from his closet weeks ago. Her white hair was twisted into a messy bun, strands escaping to frame her face. There was a cautious pride in her eyes.

"I didn't mess it up this time," she said, tapping a finger against the mug on the counter. "I think."

Owen approached with the wariness of someone who'd been subjected to multiple coffee-related disasters. He took the mug, inhaled (no burning smell—promising), and sipped.

It wasn't great. It wasn't even good. But it was coffee.

"You're improving," he said, the lie slipping easily from his tongue.

Her smile widened, seeing straight through him. "Liar."

"Technically challenged," he corrected, taking another sip to prove his point.

It had been two and a half weeks since the night everything changed—since the scroll, since the night she let her emotions carry her away. Two and a half weeks of rebuilding something neither of them had known how to name.

Some days were harder than others. Some mornings, he would find her staring out the window, eyes fixed on something that wasn't there—would never be there again.

But there were other days. Days like today, with burnt coffee and quiet banter. Days where the weight seemed a little lighter, the cracks a little less raw.

"What's the plan for today?" she asked, leaning against the counter, stealing the mug from his hands to take a sip herself. Her nose wrinkled immediately. "Oh. That is bad."

"Told you," he said, reclaiming his coffee with a smirk. "And studying. Always studying."

"Boring."

"Essential," he corrected.

After a breakfast of slightly burned toast (another of Lilith's works-in-progress), Owen settled at the table near the window. Books and notes sprawled across the surface like academic confetti, highlighters of various colors standing at attention. University entrance exams loomed on the horizon—a deadline that had once felt like the center of his universe.

Now it was just one more thing in a life that had become much more complicated than he'd planned.

Lilith plopped down beside him, picking up a textbook at random. She flipped through it aimlessly, sometimes holding pages upside-down as if that might lighten the mood. Her casual disregard for his study system would have driven him insane three months ago.

Now he just nudged her with his elbow. "You're hopeless."

"I'm moral support," she corrected, flipping another page with dramatic flair.

Silence settled between them—comfortable, worn smooth like river stones. Outside, a crow landed on the balcony railing, peered in with judgmental eyes, then flew away.

"What if I fail?" Owen asked suddenly, not looking up from his notes.

The question hung in the air—not just about exams, but about everything. About the future he'd planned so carefully, now twisted into something unrecognizable.

"Then I fail with you," Lilith replied, simple and immediate, as if she'd been waiting for this exact question.

He glanced up, meeting her gaze. "You're not even taking this exam."

"Doesn't matter." She shrugged, leaning back in her chair until it balanced precariously on two legs. "We're in this together now. If you fail, we come up with a new plan. If you succeed, we celebrate. Either way, we move forward."

The casual "we" still startled him sometimes—how easily she had folded herself into his life, claimed space in his future plans. How readily he'd let her.

"I've been thinking about leaving," he said after a while, voice carefully neutral. "To study abroad, I mean."

"I know," she said without missing a beat. "That's why you've been saving up. Living only on your part-time job income, skipping convenience store snacks, calculating every yen." She poked his arm with a pencil. "I figured it out a while ago."

The word "leaving" seemed to catch on something invisible between them. A small ripple in the comfortable atmosphere, barely noticeable but there nonetheless. Lilith's eyes drifted away from him, up toward the ceiling. Her expression shifted—not sad exactly, but distant. Lost in some thought he couldn't follow.

The word had weight. For her, "leaving" had meant something final once. Something irreversible.

He didn't speak. Didn't try to pull her back. Just watched and waited, giving her space to travel wherever her mind needed to go.

Then, like clouds passing from the sun, she blinked. Exhaled. The distance in her eyes evaporated, replaced by a soft smile that didn't quite erase the shadow underneath but existed alongside it.

"So where were you thinking?" she asked, as if the momentary lapse had never happened. "England? America?"

The grief was still there. It would never truly vanish—just change shape, become something they could carry without bleeding from it quite so much. A dull ache instead of a stabbing wound. Progress, in its own way.

By afternoon, they were at the café. The building looked the same—small and cramped, with mismatched furniture and a perpetual smell of coffee and old books. Ren, the owner, hadn't changed either, his perpetually unimpressed expression as constant as the North Star.

When Lilith had returned after her world collapsed, he hadn't asked questions.

Just looked at her for a long moment, placed a heavy hand on her shoulder, and said, "Strong girl."

Then, he'd handed her an apron as if she'd never left.

Owen hadn't expected to be working shifts alongside her again, but somehow here he was, wiping down tables while she operated the ancient espresso machine with growing confidence. Ren watched them both from behind the counter, his face impassive except for the slightest twitch at the corner of his mouth that might have been amusement.

"You're not as useless as you look," he told Owen at one point, which coming from Ren was practically a standing ovation.

The evening shift wound down slowly. The last customers drifted out, leaving behind empty cups and crumb-scattered plates. Lilith swept while Owen wiped down tables, their movements falling into an easy rhythm—like a dance neither of them had consciously choreographed but both somehow knew.

It wasn't what he'd imagined his life would look like three months ago. Back then, everything had been meticulously planned, carefully controlled.

Wake up. Make coffee. Go to school. Work. Study. Sleep. Repeat. A life designed to avoid complications.

Now his apartment was filled with someone else's breath. His routine had been shattered and rebuilt around "we" and "us" instead of just "him." He tripped over her boots in the hallway. Found strands of white hair clinging to his clothes. Argued about whether Pluto was a planet and which constellations were real.

And somehow, it was better.

For someone who had built his entire existence around avoiding change, this revelation should have been terrifying. Instead, it felt like finally exhaling after holding his breath for years.

After closing, they walked home side by side. The streets were quiet, scattered with melting snow and puddles reflecting the amber glow of streetlamps. The air had that peculiar quality of late winter—cold enough to see your breath, but with hints of something warmer waiting beneath the surface. A confused season, caught between what was and what would be.

Neither spoke.

They didn't need to…

They had become fluent in each other's silences, learned to read the microscopic shifts in posture and expression that said more than words ever could.

Owen stopped walking.

Lilith continued for a few steps before noticing, turning back with a questioning tilt of her head.

He looked at her, standing under the streetlight with snowflakes catching in her white hair.

The image superimposed itself over another memory: the first night he'd seen her, a strange girl beneath a flickering lamp.

"Whatever happens," he said, the words falling from his lips without planning or preamble, "I'll be there."

She froze. For a heartbeat, her eyes widened, startled by the sudden declaration. Then her expression softened, a smile blooming across her face—small but genuine, full of something ancient and new all at once.

She took one step toward him. "I know."

Just that.

Nothing more.

Nothing less…

No grand declarations or dramatic promises. Just quiet certainty, as steady as the earth beneath their feet.

They didn't know what tomorrow would bring.

Whether they'd stay here in this small town, or chase dreams across oceans, or wander until they found something new to call home. The future was a blank page, terrifying and exhilarating in equal measure.

But they had this—whatever "this" was—and somehow, it was enough.

This wasn't a story about a boy being spirited away to another world to become a hero. It never had been.

It was always about her.

About Lilith, princess of a dead world, dispatched not to save a kingdom but to salvage a life. Hers. His. The quiet miracle of two broken people learning that they didn't need to be fixed to be whole.

Between bitter coffee and late-night walks, between grief and laughter, between worlds and endings and beginnings—they had found something neither had been looking for.

Not just survival. Not just coping. Not even just living.

Home.

And as they continued walking, side by side beneath the winter-spring sky, Owen thought that maybe Lilith getting dispatched to his world might have brought them exactly where they were meant to be all along.