The Elmstones

As we reached the station, I looked around at the people walking around, most either looked like wealthy aristocrats, or homeless beggars with tattered clothes and dirt sprawled all over their faces.

the man waved at a young girl wearing a similar suit to mine who had been waiting on the platform. She waved back at him with a confused look due to my presence.

“Louise, this young man is Arthur, who also is a new student to Winterbury. I just so happened to meet him earlier, and asked him to accompany us. You wouldn’t mind,would you?”

“Hello,” she extended her hand to greet me. “It’s nice to meet you, my name is Louise Elmstone.”

The girl had long blonde hair and blue eyes, like a typical girl, but something about her seemed different than the average joe. Perhaps it was due to her status?

“Arthur Barnaby.” I responded and shook her hand.

“Oh, that’s right,” The man suddenly remembered. “I haven’t given you my name, either. I’m Christopher Elmstone. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Arthur.”

He offered me a handshake as well, which I naturally took.

“Well then, shall we get a move on?” Louise said. “At this rate, both me and Arthur are going to be late on our very first day, that would be quite embarrassing, wouldn’t it?”

“Yeah, it would.” I laughed in agreement, as we walked towards the platform and showed our train passes.

Luckily for me, Arthur had already arranged for a one year train pass, which boded well for me as I had no clue what I would have done had the need risen for me to get one myself. I was still extremely unfamiliar with this world, so far it seemed completely identical to mine, except for the fact that it was less technologically advanced. The train that we took was probably one that would have been used in the 20th century on Earth, but on this world it seemed to be the norm in modern day.

Hold on a second, could I have misinterpreted this entire situation? Instead of having Isekai’d, could I have actually traveled to the past? That’s right, I was forgetting something important: Arthur did not possess a phone. There was not a phone in sight anywhere in his room, nor was there a laptop or any other sort of electronics, except for a digital watch, which may have been what fooled me into believing technology was advanced. But hold on, if I thought about it for a moment, when exactly were digital watches invented?

Deciding to stop thinking about it, I looked out of the train window and began to observe the surroundings of this world. So far, there wasn’t anything really extraordinary about this place, and all I saw was a blur of buildings passing by in a rush. Unlike that huge mansion I’d woken up in, those buildings seemed far more modest, although I couldn’t be certain as I barely had time to look at one before it left my view, but the shape of these buildings resembled apartments, so I figured that area must directed to the middle and lower class citizens.

What I found strange, though, was just how many buildings there were. It took ages until they finally stopped blocking the view and allowed me to actually look at something else, like the rising sun. It didn’t seem to be any different than the regular sun, so I paid no heed to it. Seeing something you’ve already seen a million times isn’t really that interesting.

Wait, what the hell? Barely holding myself from letting out a sound, I realized something very strange. That sunrise I just witnessed, it came from the west! The sun’s supposed to rise in the east, isn’t it? Why did it rise from the west, is that supposed to be normal here?

“Hey, you’re spacing out.” I suddenly came back to reality as Louise, who had been sitting right in front of me, snapped her fingers right in front of my eyes and brought me back to reality.

“Sorry, I was just thinking about a few things.” I said, which was technically true, as I was thinking about how weird it was for the sun to be rising from the west. I guess that meant it’d set in the east, I made a mental note not to miss that, tonight.

“Oh, like what?”

Louise seemed like she wanted to make conversation, so I decided to shelve my train of thought until I could find a moment of peace and quiet. Her brother Christopher sat right next to her, but didn’t seem interested in us, instead he had been focusing on the newspaper in his hands for nearly the entire ride. I thought about bringing him into the conversation for a second, but then decided against it, in case he brought up my family or something else that I wouldn’t be able to answer.

“Nothing, just what to expect at Winterbury, that’s all.” That excuse was the best thing I could come up with, but it seemed to work. “Like, what kind of people are there, that sort of thing.”

“Oh yeah, I totally get you, there are definitely gonna be some students that are elitist or prejudiced, given the nature of Winterbury, but there are also gonna be some really nice people that you can vibe with, hopefully.”

“Yup, that’s it.”

An awkward silence fell between us for a little while. I thought of what exactly I could say to break the ice, but she ended up beating me to the punch and spoke up first.

“So, uh…what are you majoring in?” she asked.

Shit! I realized that I didn’t know what Arthur was majoring in! I also didn’t check what classes he had! What the hell was I gonna do once I got there, just stand and stare?”

“Uh, well the thing is…” I started. “I-I do have a major right now, but I’m not totally convinced of it. I’m gonna see how things go during this first semester and then decide later if I wanna keep going or switch, you know?”

“I see, that’s fair. But what is it that you’re unsure about continuing in the first place?”

I scrambled to come up with a response when the train suddenly came to a screeching halt. I breathed an internal sigh of relief as Christopher closed his newspaper and motioned for the two of us to get off alongside him.

“So, which exit do we get out from, now?” Louise asked as we got off the platform.

“South. It’s the south exit.” I answered confidently, as this was literally the only question I could have possibly answered.

Christopher nodded in agreement, and we headed towards the south exit.

“Christopher, are you really going to walk us the entire way?” Louise asked. “You didn’t have to do all that, really!”

“No it’s fine, I don’t mind. It’s not like I’ve got anything better to do right now, so why not accompany you?”

“Plus, if it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t have met Mr. Barnaby right here, isn’t that correct?” He then added.

` “I guess….”

While the two of them bantered, a sharp pain suddenly popped up in my neck. Trying my absolute hardest not to scream or alert them that anything was wrong, I walked as if nothing had happened, but in truth, agony ripped through my body, my focus was on nothing else but the pain that enveloped my neck. If either one of them suddenly decided to stop arguing with the other and turn the conversation to me, there would be nothing for me to do.

My stiffening neck made it even more of a struggle for me to walk straight, and then as sudden as it had arrived, the pain disappeared. I wondered what all that was about, perhaps a side effect from Isekai’ing? Or was it a medical condition that the original Arthur already suffered from in the first place? It would be hard to tell right now, so I ignored it.

I looked back and the two of them were still squabbling, luckily they hadn’t noticed my sudden moment of torture, and I intended to keep it that way for now. As I looked back to the front, I noticed that we’d reached the four-way crossroad that signaled how close we were to the university.

“Here, this way.” I pointed to the left.

“Isn’t it weird how confident you are in your directions, yet seemed totally lost trying to find the station?” Christopher laughed.

Hopefully he would keep taking it as a joke and wouldn’t start thinking about the contradiction presented from these two situations. I kept nervously waiting for him to say something else, but he never did.

A few minutes later, the three of us found ourselves standing in front of the gates of a huge campus. We’d arrived at Winterbury University.