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Some would say the definition of insanity is expecting a different result from the same thing.
After awakening, I found myself resting on the lap of a silver-haired beauty. We were beside the Western mansion that we’d just been in. Stella, having sat down on a bench, had a backdrop of stars behind her as looked down at me. The back of my staff-head (don’t interpret that the wrong way) was set upon the divine softness only thighs could have. On top of that, she was even stroking me. What bliss! It took a lot to contain my urge to stay here forever in still silence.
“Stella.”
Her hand froze after a jerk. She realized I was awake and hurriedly pulled back, replacing her look of worried concern with a poker face.
“You got me scolded by my mentor, you know.”
“What’d they say?”
“‘Don’t go throwing your lifeline out the window, stupid girl.’”
“That’s an exaggeration. I’m not your lifeline or anything.”
“Normally people treat staves with the same importance they do their own lives.”
“News to me... Well, anyway, sorry. I won’t be making any stupid requests like that again.”
After all, here I was, still a staff in fantasyland. Not even pain great enough to knock me unconscious had been enough to wake me up.
And that meant this wasn’t a dream.
“Where is this?”
“Um...the dormitory of Saint Antohsa’s Academy?”
“What’s the name of the country? What year, month, and day is this?”
“This is the Kingdom of Oravina, the Goddess-blessed ruler of the west continent. This is year 1023 of the Goddess Calendar and day fifteen of the Month of Wind... Where’s all this coming from?”
If I had hands, I would have cradled my head. This place was totally beyond my understanding. I had to use all of my otaku knowledge to determine this was, perhaps, a fabled “isekai reincarnation.” I was hit by a steel pipe in Japan, died a brutal death, and reincarnated into a staff as another world.
Sure, makes sense. Get hit by a stick, turn into a stick... REALLY?!
If gods were real, I’d fight them to my last breath. Why turn me into a staff? Wouldn’t that logic mean people hit by trucks should turn into trucks? Not to mention, the standard isekai trope was to start with some kind of special skill. I didn’t get anything. Unless I was actually all-powerful and just hadn’t noticed yet?
“STATUS, OPEN!” I declared.
“Um. What?”
“N-Never mind...”
No status window popped up. My only saving grace was that Stella didn’t laugh in my face.
“Well, anyway. If you’re awake, I’m going to the cafeteria. I don’t care what it is, I need food in me.”
“Oh, okay.”
“D-Don’t get the wrong idea, okay? I wasn’t waiting for you to wake up or anything! I had NO plans to eat dinner with you at all!”
“Oh, okay.”
Silence.
“Is it just me, or are you kind of depressed right now?” Stella asked after a pause.
“Well, I mean... How unlucky do you have to be to get isekai’d with no cheat skill?”
“Want me to call you a pervert? Maybe slap you a little?”
“Nah... I want to save gifts like that for when I can be me...”
Like, come on. I used to be a human, and now look at me. Of all things I could reincarnate into, I came back as a staff. It was beyond me to move even a single centimeter. Turn me into a pig, a spider, a slime, whatever! Any living creature would do—all I wanted was to be able to move. But instead, I was stuck as a staff, unable to move without someone else carrying me.
This was something I felt when I fell into the pond earlier: It was very stressful to have no capacity to move one’s own body. As it stood, I had no means of changing my fate... And since I was a staff, I had no natural lifespan. Worst-case scenario, I would be stuck like this for thousands of years.
Aaand suddenly I miss my old world.
“This might come off as sacrilegious, but are gods real in this world?”
“Are you talking about the Goddess?”
Oh yeah. She had been yapping about a goddess for a while now.
“What kind of god is this Goddess of yours?”
“I mean, she’s an omniscient and omnipotent being of transcendental nature. She shined light upon the world, formed the continents and oceans, and gave man fire. Plus, she circulates the wind. She watches over us from the stars. There is no god but the Goddess,” Stella said, each word and syllable dripping with faith.
So this land be monotheistic, eh? Given that she could, uh, fill the air with machine translation particles or whatever, those claims of omnipotence were likely well-founded.
Which meant I had found someone to complain to.
“Stella, how can someone meet the Goddess?”
“Um, what?” Stella balked. “Meet the Goddess? Why?”
“I want you to listen carefully and calmly to what I’m about to say. I came from another world.”
“What do you mean, another world?”
“I mean a place that was never meant to cross paths with this world. Think of it as me coming from a country so incredibly, unfathomably far away you would have no means of ever visiting it yourself. Before becoming a staff, I was a high schooler in Japan.”
“High sch-what? You say so many words that just make no sense.”
“It means on the inside I’m a seventeen-year-old student.”
“Wait, what? You’re not a spirit?”
“I don’t know what ‘spirit’ means to you, but I’m a human. I spent seventeen years living as a human in another world, then got hit on my head and woke up here in a staff.”
“No way...” Stella said, and then she seemingly found herself unable to say anything else. My story was just that out there.
“I need your help here, Stella. Do you know of any precedents for humans inhabiting staves? Is that normal in this world?”
“I don’t think so...”
“Then it sounds like I need to pray to your Goddess and complain that isekai’ing me into a staff is pretty unreasonable. I can’t do anything as a staff. When I was stuck in the ground, and back when we were attacked by a trout, I couldn’t move a finger—I don’t even have any. Why do I have to deal with being pulled into some weird foreign world and live this nightmare? I had seventeen years of life as a loser otaku I worked hard to develop. Stealing all of that to turn me into a staff seems a bit cruel!”