Prologue
ONE DAY, I was unexpectedly summoned to another world by the Saint Summoning Ritual.
The hour was late. I had just returned home from work and was slipping off my shoes in the foyer when it happened: an incandescent white light suddenly spilled out around my feet. It was so blindingly bright that my eyes shut tight on instinct.
When I dared to open them again, I was no longer in my familiar apartment kitchen but a vast room built of stone.
“It worked!”
“Ooooooooh!”
A crowd of people burst into cheers. I had no idea what to make of them and tried instead to understand my surroundings.
In front of me stood two types of people: some dressed in surcoats who looked like knights and others who wore long robes that brushed their ankles.
The knights were in an uproar; they clapped one another on the back with a celebratory air. Meanwhile, the people in robes remained seated on the ground, though they were all smiling faintly as if they had just seen some kind of difficult task through to its end.
I turned my attention to the floor. It was as black as the stone walls, but when I peered closely, I noticed that someone had drawn strange dark lines directly beneath where I sat. The lines connected to each other in a way that reminded me of a magic circle.
To my right was one of those massive stone walls. To my left, however, was a girl. She was the only other person in this room dressed anything like me. Granted, I wore a full suit while she was wearing a more casual knitted top and a skirt. Nevertheless, we definitely looked like we came from the same modern era.
Everyone else, though…with all that armor and all those robes, I almost wanted to ask if we had tripped into some kind of video game.
The girl beside me seemed to be in her late teens, and she had a dazed look on her face. I suspected she and I had been brought here without warning in much the same way.
Honestly? A part of me wanted to start screaming my head off. I desperately kept a grip on my alarm while I tried to comprehend our situation.
Just as I was beginning to process what had happened to us, the doors on the left side of the room flew open and several people swept inside.
In the lead was a devastatingly hot guy with crimson-red hair, whose attire made him look like a noble of the Rococo era, though without a wig. Behind him was an equally hot black-haired knight, and yet another unfairly hot guy with navy-blue hair brought up the rear. He was also dressed like a noble, though his finery was plainer than the red-haired guy’s.
At a guess, the handsome red-haired man was a prince, the gorgeous knight was his personal guard, and the beautiful third guy was some kind of official.
But, dude, if you keep dying your hair that bright shade of red, you’re gonna be bald in the future!
As I tried to escape reality in my hot-guy reverie, Red Hair knelt before the younger girl beside me. With a wide smile on his face, he asked, “Are you the Saint?”
What in the world?