Chapter 3:

Chapter 3: The Training Episode Part 1

Reborn as the Protagonist: I’m a Weeb Who Got Isekaid Into My Favorite Anime and Now I’m Gonna Make the Side Character Waifu Fall in Love with Me


For reasons I don’t feel like getting into, I haven’t sat inside of a classroom since… hmmm… uhhh…

Anyway, I’m sitting in class and Sensei is droning on about… something… but all I’m thinking about is my waifu.

Yuko sits at the head of the class, scribbling diligent notes as Sensei babbles. She’s good at sports and cooking and schoolwork too. I’m honestly amazed and more than a little annoyed that she didn’t get a bigger role in the show.

Because I’m the protagonist, I’m in the very back of the class right next to the window. I stare through the glass at the clear blue sky (clear of apocalyptic monsters that is) just like a million other anime protagonists before me.

I’m pretty good at this.

This is episode three of the show, which means Yuko doesn’t have much screen time left. In the original version, the one from before I magically appeared and started shaking things up, the protagonist is summoned willingly to another world, a magical, mythical realm of ethereal creatures and eldritch beasts.

They’re gonna have to drag me kicking and screaming away from my quiet, romantic, slice of life high school story with Yuko.

I’ve been doing everything I can to stay in close proximity to her. She comes over and makes me food at night, a detail that was never seen on screen in the original version of the show. We walk to school every morning, another new development. And starting today, we’re gonna meet on the roof every day during lunch period to share bento boxes.

I’ve got it all worked out.

“Hiro-kun, please attempt to solve the equation on the board.”

I look up at the chalkboard and see a bunch of numbers and letters scribbled in chalk. Are chalkboards even a thing anymore? This is an older show, maybe whiteboards and markers just aren’t in vogue yet in Japan?

Next thing I know, they’re gonna have me clapping erasers together as a punishment.

“Hiro-kun!” Sensei yells at me again. I’m still eyeballing the equation. There is no way I have what it takes to decipher this mathematical gibberish, but she’s losing patience with me fast.

I spot the clock. If I can stall for time, maybe…

“Hiro-kun! What are you doing?!”

Aw crap, now even Yuko’s yelling at me. Although it is kinda cute how she’s trying to whisper and scream at the same time.

Her face is completely red.

I slip out of my seat slowly, streeeeeeetching for time.

3.

“HI-

2.

-RO

1.

-KUN!!!”

The bell rings, and class is over.

It’s officially lunch time!

-

So, I’m standing outside of Sensei’s class and clapping chalkboard erasers together. Each clap sends a deadly puff of chalk dust directly into my nasal cavities and past my esophagus. Meanwhile, Yuko awaits on the roof of the school with a precisely configured array of Japanese school lunch staples.

Truly, I am in hell.

“Alright, that’s enough. Get out of here already.” Sensei relents, speaking to me with her mouth full of food. It’s a bribery from Yuko. A homemade bento box meant for me. I should be upset, but this just means we get to share.

The erasers are back at the board and I’m out of the classroom before Sensei can finish swallowing the too big bite of rice in her mouth.

As I run through the halls of the school, I spot background characters in each classroom I sprint past. Some of them I recognize from years of watching and rewatching the show. Some of them are brand new to me.

I can’t help but wonder if they’ve always been there, hiding just off screen, away from the eyes of the viewers, or if these characters are new creations spawned from me meddling in the storyline. I mean, I’ve already created weird alternate scenarios where I’m dealing with Ciel’s sister, a character who is never even name checked in the original version. And now I’m about to take part in a scene that never happened in the show.

I climb the stairs two at a time until I reach the top. A fire exit door sits past the final stair, propped slightly ajar with a big rock.

I push through the door and see-

Sylvie?

Sylvie, the earth angel, younger sister of Ciel, the angel who should have been there in episode one to save me from the giant monster in the sky, is floating above the school’s rooftop. Her legs are folded like an obedient child as she munches on the food Yuko prepared.

Hey!” I yell up to her, shaking my fist.

“Hmm…? What?” Sylvie looks down at me, dumbfounded, her mouth full of my food.

“That was supposed to be mine!”

“The girl gave it to me.” Her mouth is still full, she hasn’t stopped plugging it with food since I opened the door.

I look to Yuko, she darts her eyes and stares at the floor.

“Well, her stomach was growling, so…”

“You already ate my dinner, now you’re eating my lunch?” I stomp towards them aggressively, but Sylvie continues eating and Yuko continues looking away. “What the hell are you even doing here?”

Sylvie wipes her chin on her long, flowing sleeve.

“I have came to retrieve you.”

Him?” Yuko asks, sensing some shenanigans that I’ll have to convince her are definitely not afoot.

Me?” I ask, echoing her disbelief.

“Yes. You.” She hands the emptied bento box to Yuko. “You are the protagonist, are you not?”

“So? What do you want?” I don’t know what she’s thinking, but whatever it is will no doubt be very annoying.

“The time has come to commence your training.”

“What training? Look, I already told you, I’m not dealing with any of that ‘save the world’ crap. I’ve got my own thing going here.”

Sylvie’s expression doesn’t change, neither does her voice.

So why can I sense her irritation?

“Your personal feelings on the mission are of no importance to neither myself nor my superiors. You are the protagonist, as you have insisted, and therefore you will take part in the training required of you.” Her wings unfurl without warning, shading me and Yuko from the afternoon sun. “

Prepare yourself, we depart immediately.”

“Prepare myself…?” I mutter.

The air around us grows hot and stale. My vision blurs, the buildings on the horizon waver with intensity as the world goes black.

I know what this is!

She’s about to teleport us somewhere. Ciel pulled that move all the time in the show.

Armed with the expectation of imminent teleportation, I reach out and grab onto Yuko. This way, wherever Sylvie drags me, Yuko is coming too.

I’m gonna transform Yuko into a main character if it kills me.

-

My eyes are still shut tight when I feel reality solidify beneath my feet. It feels like the aftershock of a small earthquake, like the world is being pulled apart from opposite ends and then released at once, a rubber band snapping back into shape.

I open my eyes.

My hand is firmly grasping at Yuko’s chest, my palm is completely full to the point of overflowing.

It doesn’t matter that I didn’t mean to grope her, Yuko’s fist collides with my face at an impressive speed.

“My bad,” I manage to choke out.

“Where are we?” Her voice is wobbly, she’s clearly upset.

She has multiple reasons to choose from.

“I apologize, lady Yuko.” Sylvie floats over top of us, gliding to a halt as her angel wings fold up behind her. “It was not my attention to abscond with you in tow. You may blame the protagonist for that mishap.”

I don’t like the way she says protagonist. She’s definitely making fun of me.

“As for where we are,” she continues, “This is where Mr. Protagonist will begin his training.

“I already told you, I don’t need any training.”

“Strong though you may be, you are not yet a master of controlling your spiritual energy. Therefore, my superiors believe that you do need training.”

“Maybe I should rephrase that then. I don’t want any training. I don’t want to be strong. I don’t want to save the world. I’m steering this plot away from fantasy action adventure shonen tropes, we’re going for more of a slice of life high school romance vibe from now on.”

“I do not want to listen to your babble anymore,” Sylvie replies, “Now, please follow me.” She hovers away, her wings fluttering rhythmically up and down. Yuko follows her without question.

“What are you doing?” I try to whisper, but it still comes out loud.

“What? She said to follow her…”

“Who cares what she says? She’s not the boss of us!” I try to grab her hand but she smacks it away. Her defenses are on high alert.

“Well, what else are we gonna do, Hiro? Look around, I have no idea where we even are.”

I do look around and she’s right, this whole terrain is completely unfamiliar to me. We’re straying even further away from the canon storyline, but still not in the direction I would prefer to take it.

At this rate, I’m still gonna have to do a bunch of training and learn martial arts and gain magical abilities. I just wanted an easy storyline where I hang out with my waifu and have a pleasant school life. But no, I have to be dragged off into a magical forest for hero training.

Yuko follows Sylvie into a heavily wooded forest with a sea of tall grass. The sounds of clicking, buzzing, whirring insects drones on and on and the occasional twitter of birds and other animals makes me flinch every few steps.

We travel deeper and deeper into the forest until I can’t see the sky anymore. I look up and find only a ceiling of leaves, each tree branch home to a noisy critter.

I want to ask ‘are we there yet’ but I don’t even have a clue as to where we’re going in the first place.

“Is this part of the training?” I double over, wheezing to catch my breath. How can I be so out of shape? I’m an anime character!

For her part, Yuko seems to be doing just fine. She ties her hair into a ponytail and pats a single bead of sweat from her forehead. I should have figured the track and field tomboy wouldn’t have any issues traversing this dense forest.

As for Sylvie, she just keeps floating onward, a look of painful boredom dominating her expression.

“No,” she says, “Your training will not be nearly as simple nor as painless as this short trek. Now keep moving.”

Yuko hops to her feet and marches stoically after Sylvie.

I stay where I’m at. I really need to catch my breath. I’m lying against an impossibly tall tree. I lean my head back against its mossy bark and try to follow the sight of the trunk as it grows up and into the skyline of twisting branches. I can’t tell one apart from the rest.

There’s a sudden crackling of brush on the forest floor. I bolt forward in time to see several small forest animals skittering through the grassy expanse before me. Squirrels and rabbits and other things I’m too slow to identify all dart out in front of me. I stand up to see what all the commotion is.

WHAM.

I’m completely out of breath. I hunch over, gripping my guts in pain at the sudden, unexpected impact.

I peek through my wincing eyes and see a panicked animal scurrying around me.

It’s a deer, and a tiny one at that. I’ve seen bigger dogs than this thing. Its nubby little antlers jut out triumphantly and I finally grasp where all that pain came from.

Before I can figure out how to react to the cowering deer hovering around me, an even louder noise erupts through the trees. I have to look up, way up to see whatever this thing is.

One second there’s a tree in front of us, then the next second it’s gone.

A fuzzy claw tears the bark away in shreds as a monolithic beast lumbers past it and on to the next one. It takes me a minute to comprehend what I’m seeing but eventually I figure it out.

A bear taller than my apartment building is slowly clearing a path through the forest, and it’s headed in our direction. With each stomp it gets closer and louder, manic animals fleeing in terror every time it plants a foot in the ground.

I would be scared, but I’m in too much pain.

I struggle to get to my feet when I notice the blood on my hands and arms. That damn deer must have stabbed me somewhere with its little antlers.

The bear stumbles through the tall grass and stops abruptly. It looks down at me and the deer. The deer stands in front of me, head down, antlers raised.

Is this thing trying to protect me?

It drags a hoof across the dirt as if challenging the bear.

The bear accepts the challenging.

“Move, you stupid deer!”

I shove the pathetic thing out of harms way and without a second thought I wind my fist back. Time begins to slow to a crawl, and I’m reminded of those buckets of water and that move I pulled off in episode one. Now, here I am again, instinctively defending this poor forest creature from an intimidating predator.

Damn it, I’m starting to become a hero!

I focus all of my rage and annoyance. This is not how I wanted my day to go. I use all of my negative emotions as fuel and poor them into my fist. After a powerful wind up and energy charge, I release the pressure and send my fist flying.

My knuckles connect with the bear’s snout and I can feel each and every one of its teeth breaking, one after the other like a rippling wave on a gentle stream. The stupid thing was cocky enough to lower its head at us, fully intending to tear into me or the deer or, probably, both.

Not today, bear.

The bear’s massive furry face twists like a bottle cap, blood and spittle flying from its hanging jaw. Before long, its heavy legs follow, launching backwards until the whole thing backflips into the grass behind it.

The impact sends tremors through the forest. Birds flutter out of the trees and into the sky. Every nook and cranny of the woods is alive with tiny creatures peeking out from their hiding places to see if the nightmare is really over.

The deer nudges me, gently this time, before kneeling into a kind of curtsy before me.

“Uh, thanks?” I say, with an air of uncertainty.

What the hell did you do?”

I whirl around and find myself face to face with Sylvie. She floats over me, her face aggressively close to mine.

“I didn’t… I mean… I was just trying to help this deer out.”

What deer?!”

I look around. We both do. She’s right. There is no deer here anymore.

“Uhhh…”

“We do not have time for any more of this nonsense.”

Sylvie grabs me by the wrist, treating me like a troublemaking child, and drags me through the forest. She flies at warp speed, narrowly avoiding trees and animals along the way. I still manage to nick and scrape my skin multiple times along our perilous journey.

Something tells me she’s letting me get dinged up on purpose.

Glitch
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