01-Feeling like your life is going badly? Read this!

Long before Toma got yeeted into a brand-new world, he was a guy whose middle name might as well have been "Epic Fail." His luck was quite literally in the gutter.
—One day, during 6th grade P.E. class.
"Houku! Ten laps around the field! If you can't hit a ball, you can at least use your legs!" the gym teacher barked, his voice echoing across the dirt.
Toma stared blankly at the snapped baseball bat in his hands. Behind him, his classmates were practically dying of laughter.
"Bro can't even hit a slow pitch!"
"How does a bat even break from swinging at thin air?!"
—Fast forward to a warm autumn Wednesday. Toma, now a high school sophomore, had finally experienced the magic of first love.
"Toma-kun..." The girl in front of him stared at her shoes. "I'm so sorry, but I can't accept your feelings."
Toma, who had already mentally prepped for the rejection, gave a weak nod. "Oh, cool. It's totally fine, Tanaka-san. I get it, I'm not exactly a ten—"
"It's not that," she cut in quickly. "It's just... this morning, my beloved cat died right after looking at your photo on my phone."
"HUH?!"
"And... my dad got fired from his job right after I told him about our date plan. Even the houseplants in my room withered the second I said your name."
Toma took a step back, his face completely drained of color. "T-That's gotta be a coincidence..."
"I'm sorry, Toma-kun. But I think you're genuinely cursed."
—One year after graduating dead last in his high school class, Toma arrived as a ronin student.
"Congratulations to this year's Tokyo University entrance exam applicants! The results will be announced by candidate number..."
Toma stood amidst hundreds of prospective students, his heart pounding out of his chest. He'd ground his gears for a whole year for this. This was his moment.
"Number 1001, Yamada Hiroshi. Number 1003, Suzuki Kenji. Number 1007, Watanabe Yuki..."
Wait. I'm 1005. Why'd they skip me?
"Number 1011, Takeda Shouji. Number 1012—"
"HOLD UP!" Toma threw his hand in the air. "Number 1005! Toma Houku!"
The official squinted at the clipboard in confusion. "Number 1005? Ah, apologies. The machine couldn't read your answer sheet because you used a 2H pencil instead of a 2B. Automatic disqualification."
The entire plaza fell dead silent. Hundreds of eyes locked onto Toma with a brutal mix of pity and amusement.
Even at a university entrance exam, I manage to fail over the wrong pencil, Toma thought, staring blankly at the overcast sky.
—A few weeks post-university-rejection.
Toma was forced to get a job to survive. But even there, failure shadowed him like a clingy ex.
Right in the middle of his 48th job interview, Toma sat bolt upright across from an interviewer whose face was beet-red from holding something in.
"Why do you wish to work for our company?!" the interviewer strained out.
Toma had the script memorized. "I wish to contribute to the company's growth, develop my skillset, and—"
"Are you aware this building has been on fire for the last ten minutes?!"
Toma glanced to his right. Thick black smoke was billowing past the window. The fire alarm was screaming bloody murder in the background.
"Uh... yeah?" Toma blinked in confusion.
"And you just kept going with the interview?!"
"Y-Yeah... I thought it was, like, part of the stress test..."
The interviewer stared at Toma with a terrifying blend of awe and horror. "You... are an absolute idiot."
Following an interview that abruptly ended in a building evacuation, Toma trudged toward the station.
His mind drifted to his late grandmother. Back when he was prepping for his high school graduation, she had been the most eccentric half-century-old human on the planet. She was about to embark on a motorcycle tour across Japan on a chopper-style Harley, decked out in a leather jacket and a skull-decal helmet.
"Never surrender to the muck and the mire; when your life is a dumpster, just dance in the fire! We unlucky souls must perish with flair—remember that, brat, as you gasp for some air!" her raspy, signature voice echoed in his memories.
Grandma was the only person who never looked at him with pity. She never called him a loser or a waste of space. Hell, she treated him like he was the coolest guy on earth.
"I'm off to conquer the open road! Guard my candy shop, or you'll reap what you've sowed!"
She revved the throttle looking cool as ice, leaving Toma in the dust as the exhaust smoke literally formed a heart shape in the air.
"Grandma... stay safe out there," Toma muttered, sending a prayer up for her.
Too bad Toma's prayers were also cursed. A week later, his grandmother—his sole remaining family—passed away after slipping on a banana peel while pumping gas at a station.
"I'm so sorry, Grandma. I failed to save you from the perilous grip of a potassium casing..." Toma sniffled, staring at her portrait on the altar with glassy eyes.
But life had to go on, and Toma knew it.
—Until finally, beneath a cold drizzle after his 49th botched job interview.
Toma dragged his feet home, soaked to the bone and utterly miserable. No umbrella. No hope.
Even the freaking weather has a vendetta against me, he thought bitterly.
He stopped under a streetlamp. A soggy piece of paper was plastered to the pole—a job flyer barely legible through the rain.
Toma squinted at it. And suddenly, he burst out laughing.
"GYAHAHAHA! WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?!" Toma clutched his stomach, wheezing. "WANTED: ASSISTANT FOR AME-CHAN! UNLIMITED SALARY! WORLDWIDE PERKS! CALL THE NUMBER BELOW IF INTERESTED!"
This is the sketchiest scam I've ever seen, he thought, still cracking up. Who falls for this garbage? And who the hell is 'Ame-chan'? Some newly debuted underground idol?
But as he laughed, his hand moved entirely on its own, fishing his phone out of his soaking wet pocket. His fingers dialed the number on the flyer bypassing his brain entirely, and hit 'Call'.
Wait. HUH?! My hand is seriously committing to this bit?!
Tuut... tuut... tuut...
"Greetings~! 'Tis Ame-chan!" a melodious, divinely bright voice chimed from the speaker. "To whom am I granting an audience today?"
Toma froze, genuinely shell-shocked by his own autopilot. "Uh... speaking is, um, Toma Houku. I'd like to apply for the position on the flyer..."
"Oh my! A petitioner!" The girl sounded radiantly enthusiastic. "Pray tell, what motivation compels you to seek the mantle of my assistant?"
Toma blanked. Inside his head, the hundreds of formal, boilerplate answers he’d memorized for 49 failed interviews started skipping like a broken record. All that corporate jargon about 'synergy,' 'adding value,' and 'alignment with core mission statements'—all of which had landed him a one-way ticket to Rejection City.
Sick to his stomach of the corporate song and dance, Toma decided to just drop the filter.
"My motivation is..." Toma let out a massive sigh. "So I can actually get a job. Or, you know, at least afford to eat dinner tonight, because I'm starving and completely broke."
Dead silence on the line.
Then, the girl burst into melodious laughter.
"FUFUFU! So brutally honest! I love it!" she cackled, her majestic tone completely shattered into playful savagery. "Alright, boom! You're officially hired as Ame-chan's assistant!"
"HUH?!" Toma nearly dropped his phone in a puddle. "S-Seriously? My fiftieth interview was the charm?!"
"Of course! But first, I need your mortal behind over at my place—"
VWOOOSH!
Suddenly, a brilliant blue magic circle erupted from the pavement right beneath Toma's feet. The light spun in hyper-complex geometric patterns, radiating an energy that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
"What the hell is this?!" Toma scrambled backward, but the glowing glyph tracked his movements.
Glowing threads shot out from the circle like spectral tentacles, instantly wrapping around his limbs. He thrashed, but the grip only tightened.
"GYAAAAA!" Toma shrieked as his body was violently yanked downward into the light. The soggy flyer in his hand instantly incinerated into ash, blowing away in the wind.
The next second, Toma vanished completely. The magic circle shrank into a single point of light before popping out of existence.
CRASH!
Toma slammed hard into the dirt of a filthy, completely alien alleyway. His body felt like it had gone ten rounds in a blender, his head was spinning, and his ears were ringing.
"Ugh... where am I?" Toma groaned, clutching his throbbing temples as he pushed himself up.
The alley was a total trip. The walls were a Frankenstein mashup of rusted iron plating, moss-covered clay, and rotting wood. Copper pipes snaked everywhere, hissing out jets of pressurized steam. Antique gas lamps hung overhead, casting a sickly yellow glow over the grime. In the corner, Toma spotted piles of absolute junk: massive gears, glass vats bubbling with weird colored fluids, and tiny gadgets ticking away like clocks.
"A hip-hop zone?" Toma muttered, squinting at a bright neon mural graffiti'd across a brick wall.
His ears twitched as the faint, thumping bass of hip-hop beats rolled through the alley, perfectly synced with the clanging of metal and the rhythmic hiss of steam engines. The air was thick and heavy, a mix of chimney smog and cold night fog making it hard to breathe.
This isn't anywhere in Japan, Toma thought, blinking away his dizziness. But... it feels weirdly familiar.
Toma glanced up. The laundry hanging on the lines above him was a bizarre mix of threadbare kimonos decked out with metallic chains and accessories. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a couple of little kids sprinting by, wearing oversized streetwear paired with wooden geta sandals. The whole place felt like a feudal Japanese slum that had been forcefully upgraded with steampunk tech and modern urban streetwear.
"Could this mean..." Toma mumbled, forcing himself onto his shaky legs.
While he was still trying to process the absolute insanity around him, a voice chimed out...
"Welcome to Oru no Kuni, Toma-kun!"