Drought

“Ugh… What happened?”

When I woke up, my head was splitting. It took a while for me to get used to the constant ringing, and when my vision finally returned, before me was already an unfamiliar scene.

Gone was the feeling of hot, coarse sand around my body, replaced by the smooth and softness of feathers and cotton. It was a high-quality bed, and one of those king-sized ones to boot. The fabric felt smooth to the touch, indicating fine silk. The ceiling was much higher than what I was used to — it must be easily twice, or even thrice the height. Even with no light, everything gave out a shining golden color, as if the entire room was clad in the rare metal itself.

I looked down towards my body. A large part of my torso had been bandaged, surely the work of whoever that had brought me to this place. However, it also meant that my clothes were mostly gone — while I did get to keep my trousers, my shirt, coat and hat had already disappeared. In other words, aside from the bandages, I was completely naked on the upper half.

But it wasn’t bad news, as I finally got the chance to look at what exactly my body had gone through.

Now without anything to get in my way, I could see the long, curling black line running all the way from my shoulder to right at the end of my wrist. It was a strange tattoo, but contrary to my expectations from before, it wasn’t a pure black color. In fact, it was the opposite — while the head of the serpent remained pitch-black, the dark color only continued up to around half of my arm’s length, before slowly fading away into a transparent line at the base of my shoulder.

Before I got to question myself, there was another voice from afar calling out to me.

“Yo, woke up already?”

A rather tall and strong young man entered the room. His baggy white shirt was a strange contrast against his chocolate-brown complexion, but it only added to his charm. His curly black hair was like a rising wave, while his pearly white teeth showing themselves behind his grin gave a feel of the ocean’s breeze. Looking at the golden chain dangling outside his pants’ pockets, I could tell that he was some kind of rich kid — even if his attitude so far wasn’t nearly as snobbish.

“My… Now that I look at ya, yer’ a pretty pale guy, eh? Ya from Drizzle?”

“… Excuse me, what?”

For one, I had never heard someone use “drizzle” like a proper noun before. And it seemed like the young man before me had the opposite reaction.

“Ah, I see…” he nodded in understanding. “So yer’ the summoned kind. Japan, I s’posed?”

“… Huh?”

“What, didn’t Kana tell ya anything? Ah, but then again, yer’ gettin’ killed, so I guess she didn’t bother to. Oh, Kana is Indra’s real name, by the way.”

“Can you slow down for a bit? I’m failing to understand the conversation right now.” I raised one of my hands and held my head with the other. It was too much info for me to digest at once.

“Ah okay, okay, I’ll start from the top,” the young man nodded in understanding, all while throwing me something. Reflexively, I caught it, only to realize it was a rather peculiar fruit — the purple skin was rather hard, more akin to a shell. Combined with its rounded shape, one could even jokingly call it a grenade and someone might have believed it.

“Pull off the stem, and break the shell in half,” when our eyes met, the young man had already known what I was about to ask.

Following his instruction, I plucked out the stem and broke the shell, revealing the pure, white flesh of the fruit inside. It was even split already into pieces for ease of eating.

One bite, and I could feel like my mouth was hit with a torrent of water, like a dried-out land experiencing its first rain in a long while. There was a hint of sweetness and sourness after, adding an extra layer to its refreshing nature.

“Whoa… This is good!”

“Like it? It’s our main way of beating this heat. We call that mangosteen… though, I’m not sure what yer’ hearing right now.”

“… Huh?”

“So, now that we’ve eaten and rested, let me explain from the top…”

Pausing for a breath, the young man continued.

“Yer’ transported to this world from Japan. That’s right, this is a different world from yer’ Earth. Is that much clear?”

“Yeah, I figured that much,” I nodded. Seeing that my body had become… this, there wasn’t really another way to conclude things.

“When Kana brought ya here, I don’t know what she did exactly, but my guess is that yer’ given the same treatment as the other summoned people — which is to have a translation spell engraved in ya.”

“O… kay,” I nodded. Magic was an easy answer for everything I’d been to, and it was the most “logical” way to explain what had happened to me as well, so it was still within the realms of acceptability.

“But, ya see, our translation spell is kinda bugged right now. Turns out, it just translates everything ya heard into yer’ own language, unless it’s impossible to find another word for it, like a human’s name.”

“Ah, I see. That’s why I only heard ‘Drizzle’ just now.” I nodded.

“Yup, ya got the gist of it.”

”So…” piecing together what he had said from before, I continued. “Then that means this ‘Drizzle’ is one of the nations’ names around here, right? And I assume it’s similar to Japan, given that you mistook me for one of their citizens?”

“Er… Not exactly,” the young man shook his head. “Yer right that it’s the name of a country, but that’s just because it’s the only other one here in this world. And yer’ clearly not one of us.”

“Oh…”

“By the way, this here is Drought.” The young man pointed down on the ground.

“Drought and Drizzle…” I lightly chuckled. “What, so it has never rained here?”

“Yup.”

I immediately retracted my laughter.

“Oh, sorry…”

“Nah, it’s nothing.”

“So… how can you guys, you know… live by?”

“We got our ways,” the young man answered. “That fruit just now is one of them, for example. But now we’ve finally found our permanent solution.”

“Oh, that’s great news then! What is it?”

Not even in my wildest dream did I expect the young man to look at me dead in the eyes, his finger pointing straight at me.

“That would be… you, Great Serpent.”