Chapter 1:

Hello World

I Found a Mysterious Girl in My Inventory


Yuri opened his eyes when a gentle sun brushed his cheek with warm morning rays. Green canopies rustled in the wind above him. Milk-white clouds rushed above the canopies, ushered by the same wind. Between the canopies and the clouds a single bird was flying in the peculiar way — moving sideways, wings not flapping, with precise intent and determination.

He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with fresh air and the fragrance of wet grass and earth. A smell he did not experience for many, many years.

A forest.

Yuri did not dream often. And even when he did, his dreams would come in vague feelings, in lights and colors, in ideas, in dread and anticipation on the edge of precognition. In the dream, you know that something going to happen right before you see it. It’s a trace, a shadow of the conversation that constantly happens in the human brain. One part of it comes up with the idea, and another is responsible for turning the idea into reality that you experience when you sleep. That slight delay between knowing what’s going to happen and experiencing it — is a sure giveaway of a dream.

This time Yuri had no idea, what was going to happen.

Moreover, his mind was clear. First time in weeks, or maybe months and even years. It may not be the brightest mind or fastest, but right now it was clear, like a well-kept pond. He was perceiving so much, like some sort of veil separating him from the outside world was temporarily lifted.

This felt amazing.

But just to be sure, Yuri put his index finger between his teeth and bit it as hard as he could.

[−1 HP]

He felt it. The pain, the very real pain confirming that this was no dream. But also something else. On the verge of his perception, like a shift in the sound that you tuned out long ago, or slight movement on the edge of your periphery in the dark. It was screaming with familiarity, but, comparable to the memory of where you have put those damn keys, eluded Yuri’s grasp.

“Well, this is definitely not Kansas anymore,” Yuri said to himself, and rose up from the ground. His clothes were getting wet with a morning dew, and long grass tickled his neck.

The wet cloth stuck to his shoulder blades. He tried adjusting his shirt, and noticed that it was not exactly “his” shirt. It bore a familiar deep blue color of the usual t-shirt he wore at home, but the design was entirely different. Loose fitting, with long sleeves and laced placket. Even the material was different, not synthetic polyester or something — a raw linen. Yuri looked at his pants and felt his eyebrows crawling higher and higher. He wore some kind of medieval wide trousers dyed in stripes of deep red and blue and white. It was clearly not something he would wear voluntarily, but in this instance he liked it. A new look. A new perspective.

For some reason, Yuri was calm. He walked around, admiring the trees, listening to birds’ calls (that were becoming repetitive way too fast) and quiet murmur of the leaves above. It was not his usual sad calm, nor some fatalistic tranquility. If anything, he could call it curious calm.

Trees were growing sparsely. The ground was flat, and there was little to no underbrush. With golden rays of sun shining through the branches, this place resembled more of a heavenly garden than a wild forest.

“Did I die? Did I go to Narnia?” Yuri muttered quietly, remembering the beautiful moment of Pevensie family stumbling into an enchanted grove through a wardrobe, and associating it with how the other time they’ve got there through the uncomfortable process of dying.

With two of three most influential isekai stories of the twentieth century coming to mind, Yuri came to an obvious conclusion.

He’d been isekai’d.

As any reasonable anime fan, he did not deem this occurrence completely impossible. But seeing as he was not a high-schooler anymore, he thought that the chances of it happening were quite slim. At this point in his life, he was more likely to be transported into his own 17-year-old body to change the mistakes of his past.

He would’ve loved that.

But alas! This would be a story for a different prompt, and Yuri knew the old truth: we work with what’s given.

And the big question was: where was he isekai’d to?

A sudden rustling in the tree above didn’t give Yuri the time to ponder this question. He looked up and saw a squirrel. It was bigger than the ones Yuri was used to seeing, with wide eyes and unproportionally large fluffy tail. It looked right back at him, and tilted its head slightly.

“Hello, strange furry creature,” said Yuri, taking a small step back. “Perchance, you’re able to speak?”

There was no feeling of danger. The creature seemed odd, but not in an alarming way. Just puzzling. Like some sort of Cheshire Cat (from the third great progenitor of isekai genre). As if it would start talking in riddles or slowly fading out of existence.

But the squirrel did no such thing. Instead, it scratched its ear, and losing interest in Yuri, went hopping through the branches.

“Yeah, I didn’t like you too.”

But contrary to his words, Yuri lingered to watch the squirrel’s path. It ran up the trunk, getting on the higher branch, then ran down it with clear intention on jumping to the neighboring tree, one whose branches was touching this one. But once the creature got to this intersection, it suddenly froze for a second then jumped down to the lower branch of the same tree, ran back to the trunk and started climbing up.

After watching the squirrel going through this loop three or four times, Yuri decided that the creature must be sick, and excused himself.

“Okay, this rules out the heaven possibility. Or Narnia.”

To be honest, Yuri wasn’t sure that he had actually died. He tried to remember the last moments before being transported, but everything was a blur. He kind of was home, until he wasn’t.

“But that’s just how you die, right? You are, until you aren’t.”

It was time to look for clues.

There were no other creatures in sight. Even birds, though he could clearly hear their persistent and repetitious chirping. The place was welcoming, but rather… empty.

After some walking, Yuri found himself on the edge of a small clearing. It was something new. The clearing was full of flowers. Most of them looked quite beautiful, of gentle white hue that was almost glowing in direct sunlight.

But some of them were… awkward. They were bigger than they were supposed to be, a little tilted to the side, with huge yellow pollen buds and smaller white petals. It was almost if they were drawn in a different art style. The exact word that emerged in Yuri’s mind was “stock”.

He crouched in front of the flower, inspecting with an amused look on his face. Once again, a strange feeling of familiarity washed over him.

“What are you?” Yuri whispered, slowly putting his hand forward and gently touching one of the petals.

[Picking up SFX]

The flower suddenly vanished right before Yuri’s eyes. There was no glow, no particles flying around — it just disappeared with an echo of a very familiar sound. Yuri pulled away, his leg slipped on a wet ground, and he fell down right on his backside.

“Oh no! I killed it.” Yuri uttered, trying to mask from himself the fact that he was genuinely spooked.

“But really, what the…”

And then it came to him.

The disappearing flower, the looping squirrel, the annoying bird calls. Inventory. Broken path navigation. Stock [brid_song_01] sound effect. He was in a game. But that was not the worst part. That he could live with. The worst part was that he was in his game. The one that he was developing for the past eight months in his dark, monitor-lit apartment. That bug-ridden solo-developed overscoped RPG, full of temporary assets and broken dreams.

He had to get out of here.

He was sitting in a state of quiet panic, his heart loudly thudding and thoughts jittering around like a bunch of bugged squirrels. He could not stop imagining the grim fate that was lying ahead of him. Getting stuck in the terrain? Killed by one of the unbalanced monsters? Glitched out of existence? All of that and more, maybe at the same time.

Normally when a screaming herd of dark thoughts occupied his brain, he calmed himself rewatching one of his favorite anime for the hundredth time. With reassuring presence of his beloved… characters (not waifus! he’s not one of them) he could get back in control of his own mind.

But this time with no waifu in sight, it was warm sunlight, gentle breeze, intoxicating smell of flowers, and a feeling of actually touching grass that got him out of this dark state.

“Yoshchtch!” exclaimed Yuri, adopting a role of the anime protagonist, and stood up.

To get out of here, he had to find a way to do it. To find a way to do it, he had to be prepared. To be prepared, he had to see what kind of resources he had on him. Other than his shirt, pants and some sort of indistinct boots, he had no visible belongings. But he knew that if he opened his inventory, he was surely to find at least some starter equipment.

How do you do this, again?

Yuri tried wiggling his hands in the air, as if he had an invisible keyboard and mouse. Nothing. Maybe, a controller? No. A touchscreen?! Nope. No [ESC] button, no overlay or menu. After several minutes pacing back and forth, he tried drawing and [I] key in the air. Something happened. Some sort of faintly buzzing energy gently reacted to his fingertip. An invisible glowing [I] hanged before him. He pressed it.

With an audible “shadunk” a familiar inventory window opened before his mind’s eye. For some reason, he knew that this was his private mental space. No other creature was to see it or interact with it.

The interface was basic, but with a nice medieval style to it. It had a grid, but every item occupied only one square and was represented with a simplistic icon. Sadly, there were only two icons here. A flower — representing the healing chamomile with a stock asset he just picked up. And a strange shape, that probably indicated a corrupted icon. This thing could’ve been anything.

For some reason, Yuri felt a strange trepidation in his chest. He was nervous. With fear or anticipation? It felt like if he pressed this corrupted icon, something important would happen. Something big.

Should he press it?

“Well, I wasn’t planning on implementing gacha mechanics, but it seems that nowadays you can’t get away from them anywhere.”

With these words he touched the icon.

[Inventory SFX]

A beautiful girl in a simple white dress with gold and green embroidery stood before him. Her hair was white, her figure gentle. Her pale, graceful face exuded an aura of tranquility, as if she was sleeping. The golden rays of sun shone upon her, adding a sense of ethereal regality to her image.

Yuri looked at her from a shade of the treeline, and it seemed like a gap of a thousand miles separated them where light and shadow met. He could not avert his gaze, enamored by her brightness.

She opened her eyes, perhaps waking up from an undoubtedly beautiful dream.

She looked at him. Frowned a little. Then smiled. Unsealed her elegant lips, to say something very important.

“…”

“…”

“Achoo!”

She sneezed quietly and adorably, but the echo has carried this sound far and wide through the forest.

Yuri could not help but laugh. The veil of grandeur was cast aside, and he took a small step, bridging the gap of a thousand miles.