2. i've been killing schoolkids for 300 seconds and went up a level

I saved a beetle today.

It was drowning on the pond. I caught a glimpse of it while swimming.

I cupped the water around it, placed it on the edge of the pond, then watched it dry.

I could’ve just kept swimming. Saving it made no difference. I almost felt silly, watching it finally fly away, knowing it’d get eaten by a frog sooner or later. It might’ve hurt less to drown.

If gods exist, are we beetles to them?

After the matcha portal swallowed me, I fell.

And fell.

Manga tomes, chairs, and glittery pens floated around me, amidst the seemingly endless void.

Are you a god or a beetle?

And then there was a pale orange dot in the distance.

Are you a god or a beetle?

As I zoomed towards it, it evolved into an ember, then a torch, then a fire swallowing a castle.

The void was now a twilight sky, as though I’d fallen straight from space, like a meteorite. I wasn’t wearing any skydiving gear or catching fire or madly screaming because this was a dream, and dreams were nonsense. Imaginary people burned to death below me and I felt nothing.

A god?

No.

A beetle?

Most likely.

Won’t you save yourself, or can’t you save yourself?

If you can’t save yourself, how can you save anyone else?

“...oh, shut up.”

Are you a god or a beetle?

I was close enough to the ground that I could hear screaming from dream-people burning to death. Smoke burned my throat. What a strange dream. They weren’t usually this nonsensically coherent. As for that strange voice in my head, I couldn’t recognize it.

“Neither,” I replied, and the wind swallowed this.

Then what are you?

I blinked. I hadn’t expected it—whatever it was—to reply.

What are you?

“O-observer?”

When I landed, I didn’t die, nor did I wake up with a manga tome on my face to the murmur of off-season rain.

Instead, I bounced once, twice, then greeted the floor with my face. The ensuing ache was more akin to getting stung by an ant than becoming a human meteorite.

“...four, no. Five.”

Great. More voices.

As I sat up, I spat out white grass.

Wait… where was the castle? I smelled no smoke. I heard no screams. Above me was a giant… mushroom? A lot of them, in fact, all glowing in various shades of pastel. Had I bounced off these things?

“Four teenagers, one adult.”

The grass below me swayed to no wind. What a picturesque landscape my subconscious had concocted. The inhabitants of this supposed ‘other world’ seemed to be speaking Japanese. It’d be funny if they were mushroom monsters, too. It’d been a while since I’d watched that movie.

“Anything valuable?” Said the female one.

“Nah,” said the male one. “Phones, maybe, but I don’t really care for that.”

They sounded close—both their voices and the sound of grass under footsteps. Stupidly, I pawed at my pants pocket to confirm that, yes, I had my phone with me.

…no way.

I’d never been much of a reader, but I needed something to do at the manga club, so I picked up whatever manga or light novel they had available. I must’ve fallen asleep reading one again, for I was now dreaming it.

Time to test my theory. In the last novel I read, after the kid got hit by a truck and woke up in another world, a pair of locals found him.

A boy and girl with extremely fake-looking horns appeared behind one of the giant mushroom stalks. The boy was picking his nose but trying to be subtle about it. The girl pointed at me with an extremely fake-looking claw. “That’s—that’s one of them! Yamada, that’s one of the outlanders. You know what to do.”

No fucking way the guy was called Yamada. Come on, brain. Anyway, the story could occur as follows: either they’d take me to their village, or they’d try to pillage me. This depended on whether they were side characters or tutorial villains.

Honestly, I preferred the latter. Better to hit and be hit than to talk. Besides, it could end with awakening magic powers or something.

Yamada smirked. His fangs also looked like props. He’d stopped picking on his nose. “Well, isn’t that nice. Good evening, outlander. I’m Yamada the oni, and this is my wife, Crystalmoon44. Give us your phone and no one will get hurt.”

Pillaging scenario it was. Why were their names so stupid, though? Oh, whatever. I just had to refuse now. I’d get threatened, let them hit me, act scared, remember my dark past, and then my powers would awaken and I’d beat them up. It’d be very cathartic.

I shook my head.

Crystalmoon44 blinked. Her eyelashes also looked fake. “Maybe he didn’t hear you.”

“No, he did. He’s just trying to be intimidating. Look at him glare.”

This slander was unfounded. I wasn’t scowling, nor did I have a resting bitch face. Truth be told, without the dyed hair and pierced ears, I probably looked like I belonged in a chess club.

Crystalmoon44 tilted her head. One of her horns fell off, but she didn’t seem to notice. “I didn’t expect to see a delinquent in this place.”

“Don’t worry, honeypaw. I’ll handle this,” Yamada said as he marched towards me. “Your phone, kid. Or else.”

The oni (I decided to be charitable and humor them) was taller than me by almost a head. He wore a fur coat with what was clearly a school uniform beneath it.

Now, eye-to-neck, he smirked at me. “Feisty, huh?” I had quite literally done nothing yet. “Come on, shorty, attack me.”

Didn’t he say he wanted my…

“His phone,” Crystalmoon44 reminded.

…yeah, that.

Yamada the oni’s mouth made a silent ‘ah’. “Right, your phone and sneakers. You have ten seconds.”

When he used his fingers to count, one of the claws fell off, but he quickly put it back on.

“...four… pi… three…”

I handed him my phone.

“...Euler's number, golden ratio, one point—oh. Seriously?”

I shrugged.

“Oh. Um. Uh. That’s not… Crystal?”

“Yeahhh,” she said. “We messed up. We should’ve listened to Tonnie.”

“Now what?”

She walked towards us, too. She also wore a uniform under the fur coat. “So basically, this is a ploy to help newcomers awaken. You guys get stronger magic when you think you’re in danger.”

“But we fumbled it,” said Yamada. “You can do a manual awakening later, so it’s fine. I don’t actually need your phone. It’s kind of pointless now. Anyway, my party’s looking for yours so we can pretend to be demon bandit ninjas. The point is to—did you just laugh?”

I covered my mouth with the back of my fist and quickly shook my head.

“Told you it was too convoluted,” said Crystal… what was it again… Crystalonidemonbanditninja44. “It’s fine. The other volunteers have more experience, so I think it’ll work out for them. Think of it as… a tutorial encounter? Hey, are you mute?”

I shook my head.

“...okay. How about you help us? Your party’s inside this forest, but they’re scattered around somewhere. You can act like you’re getting attacked by us so one of your friends ‘saves’ you if you get it. Um, are your friends also delinquents?”

Yukimura and I barely tolerated each other’s presence. Aoko… tried. Hisui had spoken to me a grand total of three times. I said no with not my voice.

“Four teenagers and an adult, right?”

…an adult?

Who—

Wait.

Mrs. Hiyama?

Surely not, right? I’d almost forgotten that this was a dream. Tentatively, I nodded, and Yamada said, “I think I hear something,” before pointing at a cluster of mushrooms not too far away…

…where Hisui fled from. “Heeelp!” Behind her ran a pack of fake onis. They all wore school uniforms. I supposed she had also figured their terrible scheme out and decided to play along as a victim. As soon as she spotted me, I became her objective. “Ishidaaaa!”

“There we go,” said Crystaldemon69. “Now we just have to… wait, who’s that?”

Now that I got a better look, one of the fake onis was notably taller. Lavender, wavy hair flowed behind her, and her horn wasn’t a cardboard prop, but a glass-white, branchy stick growing out of her skull. She skipped behind them.

“Uhh, I don’t…” Yamada trailed off. “...maybe she’s lost?”

“Maybe.”

This was around the time we realized that the fake onis weren’t chasing Hisui.

They were running from the horned girl.

xXx_crystal_xXx said, “Wait, that’s a… t-that’s…”

One of the fake onis finished for her: “DRAGOOON!”