When something unexpected happens, your mind goes blank—that’s what I’d always heard anyway. As it happens, that turned out to be true.
When I felt a tug on my consciousness again, I opened my eyes and found myself in a world of pure white. I spun around to scan my surroundings. Stark whiteness as far as the eye could see.
Where am I? How’d I get here? I thought, completely dumbfounded. Come on, remember! Okay, I’m pretty sure I overslept this morning because my alarm didn’t go off, right? Then my little sister teased me about it, and we ended up fighting all morning—which reminds me, she ate the limited-time-only pudding I bought at the Hokkaido Food Fair without even asking me! Dammit! How dare she rob me of the one thing I was looking forward to after work? I wonder how long the promotion will be going on? I’ll have to look it up later. I hope it’s still available—wait, what was I doing?
Oh right... I went to work and ate lunch with the gang like always—that’s right, there was a new part-timer working at the cafeteria. I finished work and was about to head home when mom texted me to buy some yogurt on the way home. Okay, I went to buy yogurt. I started to cross the road, and...oh, now I remember. I got run over by a truck. Those bright, blinding headlights were the last thing I saw...
There were four other people around me—maybe we were all run over by the same truck—and for some reason, we were now all floating together in the whiteness.
Wait, what? We’re...floating? How—huh? Everyone else just started glowing. Is something about to happen? And I’m...not glowing. Why not?
“Ahh! What do we do? What do we do?!”
I heard a very flustered voice coming from somewhere. As for “where” that somewhere was, I couldn’t tell. Pure whiteness still stretched out in every direction.
“Come on! We need to do something! At this rate, we’re going to fail!”
It looked like they had failed: The other four figures were already beginning to fade, their bodies becoming translucent. Only I remained completely corporeal.
Actually, I’m the only one awake too... Are the rest of them sleeping? Or...are they dead? No, probably not—right? Oh, I don’t know.
“Ahh... They’re returning to the worlds they came from. Our summoning spell...”
“They would have become heroes... What a shame.”
The... The worlds they came from? Heroes? Could this be like that manga my sister was obsessed with? What was it again...?
“What the hell are you doing?!”
Wha—?! Someone sure is angry, yelling like that. Oh, the other four vanished.
“Oh no, we’ve been found out!”
“Crap! What do we do?!”
“Huh...? There’s still one person?”
“Wait, what?”
Huh. Guess summoning me wasn’t part of the plan. They seriously didn’t notice me? I was right next to the other guys the whole time... Feels kinda sad.
“How dare mere apprentices like you try to cast a summoning spell?!”
“Waaah...”
“How many times have I told you that such spells disturb the natural order?!”
“Crap, crap!”
“Oh no...”
Wait—I feel like whatever was holding me up just...vanished? Falling—I’m falling?! But where am I going?!
What’s gonna happen to me...?