I'm Screwed

All I ever wanted to do in life was share my stories and characters to the world.

Maybe I should’ve tried harder. Maybe I shouldn’t have given up on it when I was still alive. Even if it seemed impossible I should’ve kept believing. It was better than abandoning that path and dying with my dreams clutched to my chest as the pages they were drawn on rotted away with my body.

No, I thought, that’s too many should’ves and shouldn't haves.

Worrying about what I could’ve done in the past was useless. Right now, I was presented with another opportunity to live that dream. Another opportunity to show my characters to other people—in an entirely new world at that! I just needed to survive for ten years.

Survive ten years… I repeat that thought, actually, how the hell am I supposed to do that!? Nightmares??? Those things that were slamming at the windows? He expects us to be able to kill those things? With what?

I didn’t know how to fight. I never learned how to. Never needed it, I thought, because monsters didn’t exist in our world. But had I known that I would need to fight monsters for ten years after I died if I wanted to live out my dreams, I might’ve considered picking up a few martial arts when I was alive but now it was too late.

Suddenly, the fox boy silently raised his hand and asked, “since we’re tasked with eliminating these ‘Nightmare’ things, do we at least get some weapons to fight with?”

Weapons? I thought, liking the sound of that idea.

Even if I wasn’t experienced in using anything, having something to fight with other than my fists would drastically increase my chances of survival.

“Weapons? Of course,” Izan said, “In fact, you all already have them. Some of you might’ve noticed already, but when you first came into this world, you had with you the item that you cherished the most from your past life. Those are your weapons.”

Item I cherished the most?

I looked down at my hands, noticing that I was still holding onto my sketchbook.

I’m screwed.

Everyone follows suit, looking at the items in their hands or attached around their bodies. A few of them had actual weapons. An elf girl for example, had an ornate dagger, and the fox boy had a magical orb. I never thought that I would be jealous of not being born into a world where I had to constantly fight for my life, but here I was envying that others had the chance to have literal weapons be their most cherished items.

Of course, not everyone had a weapon either, but at the very least, their items were something hard or made of metal and could therefore do some serious damage when swung with enough force, like the silver cross on the demon boy’s neck.

But me? I had a sketchbook.

A. Sketchbook. How in the world am I supposed to fight with a sketchbook? Am I expected to just smack them to death? With my wimpy arms, I probably couldn’t even manifest the strength to pull that off. Ah yes, let me just kill some Nightmares with mixed media paper. 

I held my book into the air as if examining it from a different angle would help me figure out how to fight with it better.

It could at least be used as a shield maybe… I thought, until it gets torn to shreds by the first

Nightmare I fight that is.

At that point, I would rather just take the hit myself so that my precious drawings didn’t get ruined for no reason.

“But of course that’s not all you get,” Izan interrupted my thoughts, sensing the uncertainty in some people, “if you had any simple or basic powers in your past life, you get to use them here too. Things like basic healing, elemental spells, shapeshifting capabilities, blah blah blah. Stuff like that. If you knew some crazy magic in your past life though, then I’m sorry to say, but those can’t be used here. They’re overridden by the overarching magic that exists in this world. Y’know, the golden stuff you saw floating around my arms?”

That’s right! I remembered, there’s magic in this world too!

Being a mage wasn’t my first choice, but I was taking anything at this point.

“And how do we use this magic?” I asked.

“Hm?”

“Uhh… how do we use this magic…?”

Izan silently stared at me as if he wasn’t expecting that question.

He thought for a moment, tapping his finger on his chin before staring off into nowhere. Occasionally, he tossed us a few glances back and forth, and continued mumbling in an incoherent manner, but after a while, he looked back at us and took a deep breath as if preparing to explain.

“Well,” he finally said, “I don’t know actually.”

I’m screwed.

“Well, to be exact, it’s less of an ‘I don’t know anything at all’, and more of a ‘I don’t know how to explain how you would manifest it’. Each of us draws magic from different sources, and the way one person harnesses it may differ entirely from another. You’ll figure it out when you get to it though. Everyone does eventually. Well, unless they die first. Then that’s kinda… yeah you get the gist. As far as I understand, the power comes from your most cherished item so you might want to keep that close by… Anyway, does anyone have a question I can answer?”

Don’t just brush off something so serious like it’s no big deal! I wanted to shout.

I couldn’t believe this guy, but I suppose if he genuinely didn’t know how to explain it, then there was no helping it.

“No more questions?” Izan asked, seeing the silence that had returned to the room, “great. Now, you’re more than welcome to get into teams of however many you like, but do know that historically, teams that were too large were wiped off because in tougher situations, you’ll end up being swarmed by Nightmares. All it takes is one unstable member to start a bad chain reaction after all, and smaller teams are not only easier to manage but also have closer bonds with each other.”

He pulls out a pocket watch from his coat and stares at something written on there.

“We’ll be at the first stop in an hour: a city known as the Lumifall Hearth. After you depart from the station there, it doesn’t matter which train you choose to ride from then on as long as you check in with a Conductor at least once a week. If we find that one of you has abandoned your duties, we will hunt you down until your death is certified. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have about fourteen more passenger cars to relay this information to.”

He walks off to the next cabin while muttering something about how he should really downsize the number of passenger cars in his train, or at the very least reduce how dramatic he makes his entrances.

When he finally disappeared, I looked around the train in search of my last hope: I needed someone to carry me. At least until I figured out how this magic system worked.

A few people began to form groups, introducing themselves to each other, and the silent room slowly started to become just a bit louder.

“Hey,” the dwarf girl said, walking up to me with the demon boy behind her, “my name is Petra and this guy’s name is Maius. What’s yours?”

Two people? Coming up to me first? It was strange but I wasn’t complaining. The two of them looked pretty strong, especially the demon boy Maius.

“Shidou,” I replied, “Shidou Hirawa.”

“Nice to meet you Shidou,” Petra said, “the two of us liked the way you stood up to that jerk earlier, and want to see if you’re interested in teaming up with us.”

By ‘jerk’ she most likely meant Izan, but forget about that, I was just offered a team invitation from two strong candidates!

“I’d be more than happy to—”

“Hold on,” Maius suddenly interrupted me, “while we value your conviction, we aren’t willing to team up with anyone useless. That guy might be a jerk, but if he was right about having too many teammates being worse overall, then we have to choose our members carefully. What can you do? Do you have any powers?”

I froze.

He was right. What can I provide to them? I was useless, just like I always had been in my past life. It was the same—all I had with me were my dreams.

“...No,” I finally admitted, “I don’t.”

The two of them looked at each other before Petra shook her head.

“We’re sorry then,” she said, “but we hope you understand.”

They walk off without another word, leaving me behind to look for someone else.

But who? I thought, who would want a loser like me on their team?