ANNUAL LEAVE - PART IV

After a long weekend of luxuriating in a world of magic – stuffing our faces, relaxing in hot-springs, and generally indulging ourselves – we return to normalcy at the Returns Agency. Or, as close to ‘normal’ one can really get at an organisation that exists between and beyond all of time, space, and every dimension.

Not that anything else happened beyond our well-earned break either...

When will the torment end?!.

After nipping to my room to stow away all the novelty items I picked up – dodgy potions, x-rays lenses, and similar ephemera – we get to work processing the gunman from another world.

“Name?”

“Jun.”

“Occupation?”

“NEET.”

“Family?”

“Uh, yeah, but we don’t see each other much...”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

I was just trying to check whether there would be anyone that might have noticed he was missing, not touch a nerve.

“What’s the last thing you can remember before being transported? Was anyone else with you at the time that might have been isekai’d as well?” I elaborate to make sure nothing is missed out.

Jun gets uneasy, understandable considering I’m probing him for information while he’s stuck in a quarantine room behind bullet-proof glass.

“I...” he fidgets and sighs, “I was playing a visual novel.”

“Which one?” I don’t hesitate, I don’t want him feeling bad for what he likes, we all have hobbies, “I don’t know many DreamCatcher titles, sorry.”

“Oh, err... To The South? It’s set in Okinawa...” He trails off again, still uncertain about whether it’s alright to talk about these things. I keep encouraging him, asking whether he uses guides, posts in forums, writes reviews, or anything peripheral to playing the game itself, but he shrugs, “I just don’t know what to do with my life, y’know?!.”

Too well...

“That’s how I ended up here!”

Jun buffers, trying to work out whether to take me seriously, “I was working part-time gigs, and delaying uni, because I couldn’t decide on anything... What I’m getting at is...” I lay out what we can do for him.

Similar to my own situation, we can work out what dimension he is from, whether he can be returned there, and if not, identify as close an alternative to his home as possible, “...you weren’t an issue to the world you ended up in until you picked up the handgun, and even then it would have just shown the locals what it is and how to use it, so they’d replicate them en masse.” Don’t want a beautiful, peaceful place of magic and wonder turning into a violent hellhole of wizards with guns massacring each other. Nor his short-lived rule as GunKing!

“Also, seems like it wasn’t an issue you disappearing from your original timeline, otherwise our systems would have picked you up sooner.” Jun starts to shrink.

The kind of self defeated posture we all fall into from time to time. A trap of its own making that threatens to swallow lives whole if left unchecked.

“Hey, don’t worry. That’s a good thing.” He scoffs, and I’d think the same after hearing what sounds like you’re so insignificant that multiple dimensions can just keep going without you, but I press on, “It means you can probably go home to your original time and place in the multiverse without any repercussions.”

It takes a little more prompting, that other people – me – are stuck between timelines, because if they go back their home-world ends, so he has a much better opportunity open to him.

While I work on helping Jun gradually perk up, Meganie has been hovering about checking his wound; making him flinch with her mere proximity, in case another delicious ice-cream crashes into his skull.

She takes samples and sets things going on various machines to determine his point of origin and how best to get him back there with magic, science, or the power of a bipolar god.

It’s nostalgic whenever she slips back into this cold, stony faced, personality. Bitterly professional.

Meganie flits about, scraping under his nails, swabbing his ears, sticking things in his mouth and nose to get various readings. “Wou dwone?!.” Jun tries to talk around a sensor placed under his tongue, directing his frustration at my colleague, but she just continues with her routine examinations in sultry silence.

Yeah, I saw your glances!

“We’ll be done soon, just be grateful she doesn’t need to go ‘To The South’ on you for anything.” I make a hand gesture implying ‘A Thousand Years Of Pain’ and he stiffens instantly. Much more compliant.

Glad that’s the same across timelines.

The ruthlessly efficient empiricist continues her dance while we chat.

I’m mostly trying to keep the poor guy at ease, and gas him up about going home. Things keep flip-flopping, though. As soon as we hit on an avenue that perks him up, we hit a dead-end that drops him back to feeling low.

“You got any other hobbies? Anything you used to like or were good at in school?” I start clutching at straws, but Jun keeps shrugging and gives me a face that tells me he knows how frustrating it is that he doesn’t have any answers. I scratch my head out of the vexation we both knew was coming, “err... did you not even have some silly dream as a kid?!.”

He’s taken aback by my tone, which I apologise for, but he waves me away. Completely understanding and forgiving of it.

“I guess I wanted to draw manga...” It’s barely more than a sigh, but I hear it.

Jun explains how his parents wanted him to be something proper – a doctor, or a lawyer, or an engineer, or an accountant... the usual – so forced him to study when all he wanted to do was draw. He resented not getting to draw, so refused to study, and ended up doing nothing.

Paralysed, upset, and alone.

“You still any good?” I challenge him to draw me something.

Sat there in his boxers, Jun does a rough sketch of Meganie and I in our hazmat suits.

It’s neither good, nor bad, nor representative of hidden talent.

Just a steady hand that could improve with practice.

I pull my co-worker over for a quick sidebar. “How long you think we can hold him for?” I feel like a cop determining on what grounds to detain a perp to squeeze them for information.

Meganie’s glasses and face shield are beginning to fog from being stuck in the ambient temperature of the quarantine room. She has to take a moment to change tracks in her mind, going from the practical actions of processing to searching her memory for specific bureaucratic limitations.

“However long we need, I think.” She cross-examines her recollection of the rules, but seems relatively certain, “If a person is sick or injured, as long as they need to recover; if not, then just as long as we need to make sure they aren’t harbouring foreign bodies or hazardous materials that might affect their home-world; or, as long as it takes the Returner to identify the best time and place to return the subject.” She blinks at me through the condensation on her lenses. “What are you planning?”

Very astute.

A grin is all she gets before I turn us back towards Jun.

“Esteemed colleague, do you not concur that there appears to be some magical residue on this poor fellow?” Hamming it up for any surveillance systems.

“Our tests may not be picking it up, but perhaps it is something that cannot be identified by machine!” I strike a dramatic pose to deliver my diagnosis.

“We may have to keep the patient under observation for an indeterminable length of time while those supernatural energies dissipate, so that no one will be affected by them in his place of origin...” another flurry before the crescendo, “It must be eczemagic!”

Shinggg~

Sunuvabich~

“Ken.”

Meganie gazes upon my brilliance.

“What are you talking about?” she doesn’t get it, “There’s no such thing-”

I spin her around again – with a little too much force so that she is basically facing the same way by the end, like we’re doing interpretive ballroom – then I bring her down to squat with me instead.

So as not to get too dizzy, I lay it all out for her, “Look, if we keep him here, he’ll have time to practice drawing. Lots of cool models with all the heroes to use as real life references. No need to stress about rent, work, finances, food, or family. Just some solid full-time study, and then back home. Think of it as rehabilitation, so he doesn’t go blabbing about everything as a way to make a few bucks.” She looks dubious, but doesn’t stop my mad ramblings.

I take a moment to collect my thoughts and suggest a plan, “We bluff his results, purposefully mess up paperwork, whatever slows the process. He gets a year or two to himself, gets his head straight, picks up a trade, then we plonk him back where he was in good old pre-millennium Japan.”

Kinda like a prison sentence, really, but some people just need respite from responsibility to focus on themselves for a while. Not many have the means or support network to go about it, though.

“But...” my partner in crime – or recidivism prevention, depending on how you look at it – looks me squarely in the eye, “...he pointed a weapon at you.”

To her, that means the death penalty... hence the mild torture.

There can be no reprieve for those that might harm me.

Jun’s not a bad guy, just down on his luck, a life’s worth so far, so I push the point that we help him.

I see too much of myself in him to let the guy down, but I don’t say it.

Still deserves the rough treatment during processing...

“Hmm...” she’s not happy about it, but accepts while pouting, “so long as we-”

“Of course we’ll be thorough, and cover our tracks.” I complete Meganie's sentence to put her mind at ease.

My companion shakes her head.

“Not that!” then gets a little bashful, “...we go on another date-”

“A-ny’other date?!.”

Her question echoes in my mind.

Wait, no it didn’t!