The Choice

With Alistair defeated and his remaining cultists rounded up by a very confused but efficient Royal Guard detachment that Justus summoned, a sense of profound and beautiful finality settled over me. The world had stopped shaking. The angry beam of light in the sky was gone. The plot, for all intents and purposes, was over.

My internal monologue was already singing a triumphant hymn of relief. The bad guy is defeated. The world is safe. The story's over. Now I can finally begin my true life's work: achieving a state of perfect, uninterrupted sloth.

“Alright, everyone, pack it up,” I announced to my exhausted but victorious team on the windswept peak of the Great Jura Mountain. “Great work. Five stars. I’m teleporting us back to my office, where I plan to sleep for a week. Don’t try to contact me unless the building is on fire, and even then, think twice.”

I grabbed my team, focused on the familiar, comfortable image of my office, and tore another hole in reality.

But we didn’t end up in my office.

We materialized with a flash of golden light not in my sanctuary of sloth, but in the vast, dusty, and all-too-familiar Grand Summoning Hall of the castle. The place where it had all begun.

“Uh… wrong address,” I muttered, looking around at the pigeon-infested chandeliers. “My magical GPS must be on the fritz.”

But then, a low humming sound filled the air. The massive, intricate summoning circle on the floor, the one that had been dormant for one hundred and twenty years, began to glow. It wasn't the violent, chaotic purple light that had first dragged me from my toilet. This was a soft, steady, and impossibly gentle golden light. It coalesced in the center of the circle, forming a shimmering, stable gateway. A portal.

On the other side, through the shimmering golden haze, I could see it. Fluorescent lights, buzzing with their familiar, soul-crushing drone. Cheap linoleum tiles. The corner of a gray, metal stall door. It was the office bathroom. It was my old life.

It was a way home.

My breath caught in my throat. An actual, real way home, I thought, my mind going completely blank. I never… I never really thought it would happen. The author is actually giving me an out. The story is really over.

The rest of the team was silent, all of them staring at the portal, understanding exactly what it was. Edgar looked like he was about to cry. Justus, a man who had just renounced his entire homeland, gave me a solemn, respectful nod.

Eliza, ever the analyst, raised her slate. “The energy signature is stable,” she announced, her voice softer than I’d ever heard it. “It appears to be a one-way, one-time portal, keyed directly to your unique dimensional frequency. It is, for all intents and purposes, a path back to your world.”

Rumiri and Catarini, the other two souls in the room who understood what it meant to be from another world, just looked at me with a quiet, knowing sympathy.

As I stood there, completely stunned, staring at the gateway to my old life, Marie stepped forward.

“Could you all give us a moment?” she asked, her voice calm.

Without a word, the others retreated to the far side of the hall, leaving the two of us alone in the golden glow of the portal.

“So,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “That is your way home.”

I couldn’t speak. I just nodded.

She stood beside me, not looking at me, but at the shimmering gateway. “I suppose I always knew this day might come,” she said. “A hero is summoned, he saves the world, and then he goes home. It is the proper way for these stories to end.” She finally turned to look at me, a small, sad smile on her face. “Thank you. For saving my kingdom. For stopping Alistair. For being a lazy, insufferable, ridiculous man who somehow managed to do what our entire army could not.”

What is this? my brain screamed, trying to find its usual cynical footing and failing miserably. Is this the romance subplot? The part where the tsundere princess finally drops the act before the hero has to make a choice? Author, you're really hitting all the tropes, aren't you? But… damn it. Why does it feel… real?

“At first,” she continued, her gaze unwavering, “you were just a fascinating disaster. A lazy, lecherous, impossible man who stumbled into our lives. You were a puzzle. An amusement. A chaotic force that I found endlessly entertaining.”

Her tone softened, losing its teasing edge, becoming something raw and sincere. “But you were also kind, in your own strange, backward way. You were honest. You saved us, not because you were a hero, not for glory or honor, but because you were protecting your friends and your own ridiculous desire for a quiet life. I…” She took a small, shaky breath. “I have grown accustomed to having you here. This kingdom… I… would be far, far duller without you.”

It wasn't a grand declaration of love. It was something quieter, deeper, and far more devastating. It was a confession.

My mind was a chaotic mess. I thought about my old life. The gray walls of my office cubicle. The lonely nights with nothing but cup noodles and a gambling app for company. The profound, soul-crushing pointlessness of it all.

Then I thought about this life. The constant, unending annoyance. The ridiculous, life-threatening crises. But also… Justus’s unwavering, idiotic loyalty. Eliza’s sharp, analytical wit. Edgar’s earnest, clumsy devotion. Rumiri and Catarini, my fellow isekai-disaster-people. And Marie. The scary, brilliant, manipulative princess who was the only one in this entire world who ever really saw right through my act and decided she liked what she saw anyway.

My weird, dysfunctional, pain-in-the-ass family.

The portal hummed, a gentle, insistent call back to a life I no longer recognized. It shimmered, and for a second, the image within grew clearer. I could almost smell the faint, familiar scent of industrial-grade bleach and shattered dreams.

Marie didn't pressure me. She didn't plead. She just stood there, her expression more open and vulnerable than I had ever seen it.

“The choice is yours,” she said, her voice soft. And then, for the first time, she used the name that no one else here knew, a name that felt both foreign and intimately familiar.

“Akina.”

I stood there, between two worlds. On one side was the portal home, a gateway back to a life of quiet, lonely mediocrity. On the other was Marie, and a new life of chaotic, annoying, but undeniably vibrant existence.

Well, shit.