My Cousin Got Isekai'd Too and Now She Wants to Kill Me

When I said I wanted companionship in this world, I was thinking maybe a talking sword. Or a wise mentor figure. Perhaps even a cute mascot character that would provide comic relief and occasionally useful advice.
What I got instead was my cousin Haruka, armed with a fireball spell, wearing actual armor that wasn't made of shame, and sporting a facial expression that clearly communicated her intention to slap the source code out of my body.
This was not an improvement.
---
It started approximately forty-seven seconds after my triumphant declaration about breaking the game wide open. Turns out, declaring your intentions to break things while riding an overpowered chicken through the sky attracts attention. Specifically, it attracts the attention of the game's auto-correction systems, which apparently included "violently redirect flying players into solid objects."
Nugget and I were soaring majestically over what PatchNotes unhelpfully labeled as "Zone_04_Bakery_District_TEST" when the sky itself seemed to hiccup. One moment we were flying straight. The next, we were spinning like a washing machine filled with regret.
"NUGGET!" I screamed, clutching feathers. "WHAT'S HAPPENING?!"
> "Patch 1.04: Flying mounts now subject to collision detection. Update applied retroactively. Apologies for any inconvenience, death, or humiliation."
"THAT'S NOT AN APOLOGY!"
We slammed into the side of a floating bakery—yes, floating, because apparently the developers had run out of ground space and just started stacking buildings in midair like a vertical city made by someone who'd never heard of zoning laws.
I tumbled through pixelated croissants that felt disturbingly real against my face. Glitched scones exploded into particle effects around me. A baguette that was clearly labeled "PLACEHOLDER_BREAD_MODEL_V2" smacked me across the face with the force of a wooden sword.
I rolled, bounced off what might have been a counter (or possibly a very aggressive table), and finally came to a stop when my face planted directly into a pair of boots.
Very angry boots.
Boots that I recognized.
Boots that belonged to the one person in the world—any world, digital or otherwise—who could make me wish I was back fighting the Unkillable Chicken of Doom.
"Kazuki?"
My stomach dropped so hard it clipped through the floor geometry.
I looked up slowly, praying to every digital deity that I was wrong. That this was a coincidence. That there were lots of people with that voice. That tone. That specific way of saying my name that made it sound like both a question and a threat.
But the universe—or in this case, the buggy beta test—had no mercy.
"Nope," I muttered from my position on the floor, my face still pressed against her boot. "That's a common name. Super common. Definitely not me. I'm... uh... Kazuki's twin. Kazuki Two. The other Kazuki. The good one."
The boot kicked me. Not hard enough to do damage, but hard enough to make a point.
I rolled over and sat up, finally accepting my fate.
There she was. **Haruka Tanaka.** My cousin. My childhood gaming rival. The person who once threatened to delete my Minecraft world because I'd called her "Princess Poop-Pants" when we were seven (she'd held that grudge for sixteen years). The girl who'd beaten me at every single video game we'd ever played together, then proceeded to beat me at board games, card games, and once, memorably, a game of rock-paper-scissors that somehow lasted forty-five minutes.
She looked exactly the same as she did in reality, which meant the game had scanned her appearance perfectly: sharp dark eyes that could locate a lie from fifty paces, black hair pulled back in a practical ponytail, and an expression that suggested she was already calculating the most efficient way to murder me and hide the body in a digital forest.
But unlike me in my Cloth of Minimal Shame and Debug Cloak, she was dressed like she'd actually read the tutorial. She wore proper armor—dark leather with purple accents that practically screamed "mage class." Her staff (an actual staff, not a broken spoon) was planted firmly beside her, crackling with barely contained magical energy. Her HUD showed a level that was definitely higher than one.
She looked like a protagonist.
I looked like a mistake.
"What," she said, her voice dangerously calm, "the HELL did you do to this game?"
"Technically," I wheezed, still recovering from our crash landing, "the chicken did it."
Her eye twitched. That was never a good sign.
Behind her, Nugget was pecking innocently at a croissant, completely unconcerned with the family drama unfolding. The chicken had apparently decided that post-crash snacking was more important than defending its rider.
Haruka's gaze shifted to Nugget, then back to me, then to Nugget again. I could see her brain processing the information, trying to make sense of what she was seeing.
"Is that," she said slowly, "the raid boss from the beta trailer? The one that was supposed to be unkillable?"
"His name is Nugget now, and we're friends."
"You tamed. A raid boss."
"Technically I exploited a glitch in the taming system using a debug item I found in a restricted zone that I accessed by falling through a portal flower, but yes."
She stared at me for a long moment. Then she did something I wasn't expecting.
She pulled up her menu and started scanning my character information. Her expression went from angry to confused to horrified to something that might have been impressed but looked more like indigestion.
"Kazuki," she said, her voice flat.
"Yes, dear cousin of love and theoretical mercy?"
"Your class is listed as 'Bugged Survivor.'"
"It's a very rare class."
"Your only skill is 'Slightly Moist.'"
"It has its uses."
"You're wearing equipment that's flagged as 'THIS SHOULD NOT EXIST' in the code."
"Fashion is subjective."
"And you have a pet chicken that's classified as a WORLD-ENDING EVENT."
"He's very well-behaved. Mostly. Sometimes."
She closed her menu, took a deep breath, and spoke with the careful precision of someone trying very hard not to commit familial homicide.
"I. Hate. You."
---
**[Haruka has joined your party! (Status: Reluctant)]**
A notification popped up in my vision, followed immediately by PatchNotes:
> "New Party Perk Unlocked: Sibling Sync"> Effect: When Kazuki dies, Haruka gains +20% damage bonus for 60 seconds> Note: This perk appears to be motivation-based
Haruka read the same notification. A smile spread across her face. It was not a kind smile. It was the smile of someone who'd just discovered a very efficient farming method.
"That's... concerning," I said.
"That's wonderful," she replied.
---
We relocated to a less destroyed part of the floating bakery—apparently it was an actual player hub called "The Risen Yeast," run by an NPC baker who kept trying to sell us "Bread of Questionable Origin" (+2 HP, +5 Confusion, May Cause Enlightenment).
Haruka explained how she'd ended up here. It was, unfortunately, my fault.
"I was at home," she said, stirring a cup of tea that the NPC had given her (mine had turned into a frog, which hopped away before I could drink it). "Playing a completely different game. Then my screen glitched, showed your character name, and I got a popup that said 'PLAYER_KAZUKI has broken reality. Accept emergency summon to assist? Y/N.'"
"And you clicked yes?"
"I clicked no. Five times. Then the game clicked yes for me and I woke up face-down in a swamp."
"That's rough."
"I had to fight my way out of the tutorial zone. *Properly*. With actual combat and strategy."
"Sounds hard."
"It was. And then I get here and find out you just... tamed the final boss and broke the entire progression system."
"I'm efficient."
"You're a disaster."
PatchNotes chimed in helpfully:
> "Patch 1.05: Game now compensates for player Kazuki's existence by summoning competent players to balance party composition. This is working as intended."
"See?" I said. "The game thinks we're a good team."
"The game thinks you need a babysitter."
---
After Haruka finished explaining how broken I was (a list that took approximately fifteen minutes and included phrases like "statistical anomaly," "walking bug report," and "the reason developers drink"), she stood up with the determined expression of someone about to take charge.
"Alright," she said. "If we're stuck here together, we're doing this properly. First, we need to find you actual equipment. Second, we need to level you up so you're not completely useless. Third—"
"I have a quest!" I interrupted, pulling up my menu. "It says to retrieve a Debugged Loaf of Eternal Bread from a haunted toaster dungeon."
She stared at me. "That's not a real quest."
"It is! Look!"
I showed her the quest log. Sure enough:
> **Quest: Bread of the Damned**> Difficulty: ??? (Probably Too Hard For You)> Objective: Retrieve the Debugged Loaf of Eternal Bread from the Toaster Tomb> Reward: ??? (Might be pants)> Warning: Enemies inside may reference your browser history> Warning: This is not a joke
Haruka's eye twitched again. "Why would enemies reference your browser history?"
"The dev team got creative with their error messages?"
"This game is nightmare."
"But a funny nightmare!"
---
The Toaster Tomb was located in the basement of The Risen Yeast, accessed through a door that kept flickering between "ENTRANCE" and "ENTRANCE_NOT_FINAL_TEXTURE." 
The moment we stepped inside, the temperature dropped and the lighting shifted to an ominous red. Toast-related ambient sounds echoed through the corridors—the pop of a toaster, the scrape of a butter knife, the distant screaming of wheat.
"This is the stupidest dungeon I've ever seen," Haruka muttered.
"Just wait," I said.
The first enemy appeared: a **Burning Toast Soldier** (Lv. 12), its body made of charred bread, wielding a butter knife like a sword.
It locked onto us, opened its mouth, and screamed: "I CAN HAZ PANTS?"
I froze.
Haruka looked at me. "Why does it know about your—"
"DON'T ASK."
More enemies emerged from the walls:
**Burnt Bagel Berserker** (Lv. 14): "DELETE BROWSING DATA! DELETE BROWSING DATA!"
**Croissant Cultist** (Lv. 13): "WHY WERE YOU GOOGLING 'CAN CHICKENS FLY TO SPACE'?!"
**Sourdough Sorcerer** (Lv. 15): "YOUR SEARCH HISTORY IS A CRY FOR HELP!"
Haruka was laughing so hard she could barely cast spells. "Kazuki, what have you been looking up?!"
"SURVIVAL TIPS! GAME GUIDES! NORMAL THINGS!"
"'HOW TO ROMANCE A VENDING MACHINE' IS NOT NORMAL!"
"THAT WAS FOR A DIFFERENT GAME!"
Combat became chaos. Haruka was firing off spells between fits of laughter, barely able to aim. I was running in circles, trying to dodge enemies while also dying of embarrassment. Nugget was pecking anything that got too close, seemingly immune to the psychological warfare.
Then Haruka, tears streaming down her face from laughing, accidentally cast **Firestorm**—an AoE spell that apparently she'd unlocked by actually playing the game correctly.
The entire dungeon erupted in flames.
Every single toast-based enemy combusted instantly.
The walls caught fire.
The floor started melting.
And then the dungeon just... deleted itself. We were suddenly standing in an empty room with a single treasure chest and a sign that read: "SORRY. DUNGEON UNDER MAINTENANCE. HERE'S YOUR LOOT ANYWAY."
---
Outside, sitting under a glitched-out rainbow that kept playing elevator music on loop, Haruka finally caught her breath.
"I can't believe this," she said, wiping tears from her eyes. "Out of all the people to get isekai'd into a broken beta test, it had to be *you*."
"Hey, I'm doing pretty well! I have a chicken, I have pants, I have... this cloak thing!"
"You tamed the final boss of the tutorial with a spoon. While naked."
"Innovation."
"Insanity."
"Same thing in gaming."
She sighed, but I could see the hint of a smile. Despite everything—despite the bugs, the chaos, the fact that we were apparently trapped in a video game that seemed held together by duct tape and developer tears—there was something almost fun about this.
"Look," I said, sitting down beside her. "I know I've been a disaster since I spawned in. But maybe this world glitched for a reason. Maybe we're here to... I don't know... fix it? Or at least break it in interesting ways?"
Haruka looked at me like she was trying to decide whether to agree or fireball me into next week.
"Fine," she said finally. "But if you die one more time to poultry, I'm abandoning you."
At that exact moment, Nugget—who had been quietly observing our conversation—decided this was the perfect time to establish dominance.
He pecked the back of my head.
Hard.
My vision went black.
> **You have died. Cause: Domestic Violence (Poultry Edition)**> Respawning in 5... 4... 3...
The last thing I heard before respawning was Haruka's scream of frustration, so loud it caused the glitched rainbow to crash and reboot.
When I respawned five seconds later (now 12% faster, thanks to the patch), Haruka was sitting on a rock with her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking.
"Are you crying?" I asked carefully.
She looked up. She wasn't crying.
She was laughing so hard she couldn't breathe.
"You," she gasped between laughs, "got killed by your own pet! AGAIN!"
"In my defense—"
"YOU HAVE NO DEFENSE!"
PatchNotes appeared:
> "Achievement Unlocked: Killed By A Chicken (x11)"> This is a new record. Congratulations. We are removing the achievement system.
Nugget clucked innocently.
I sighed, checking my equipment to make sure everything was still there post-respawn (it was, minus three durability points on my Cloth of Minimal Shame).
Haruka finally stood up, wiping her eyes, her expression shifting from amusement to something more serious.
"Alright," she said. "I'm officially invested now. If we're stuck in this nightmare, we might as well see how far we can break it."
"Really?"
"Really. Besides," she grinned, "someone needs to keep you alive long enough to see what other ridiculous things you accidentally do."
"That's the sweetest thing you've ever said to me."
"Don't get used to it."
---
We set off together—a bugged survivor with a legendary exploit cloak, a competent mage who'd actually read the tutorial, and a world-boss chicken who occasionally committed friendly fire.
According to PatchNotes, the nearest town was a place called **Respawn City**, where apparently other trapped players had formed communities, factions, and what the notes described as "a surprisingly stable economy based on trading glitched items and emotional support."
"That sounds promising," Haruka said.
"That sounds like a disaster waiting to happen," I replied.
"With you around? Definitely."
Nugget clucked in agreement.
And so we walked toward the city, toward whatever broken quests and buggy adventures awaited us, toward a world that seemed to run on chaos and bad code.
It was going to be a mess.
It was going to be dangerous.
But with Haruka by my side (even if she threatened to kill me every five minutes), I was starting to think we might actually survive this.
Or at least die in entertaining ways.
---
> **End of Chapter 2**