Seiichirou Kondou was exhausted.
The number of staff had been slashed, and his work continued to increase. Budgets were being revised as soon as they were drafted. From morning until night, Seiichirou waged an all-out war against people bringing him their hoarded receipts, claiming they were urgent. Assistant section chief was a misleading job title—essentially, whoever held this position was forced to do odd jobs from both their superiors and subordinates.
Seiichirou’s twenty-ninth birthday had come and gone before he knew it, and by the time he realized it, the shadow of thirty was already looming over his weary body. Not having been able to cook for himself lately, Seiichirou was severely lacking in nutrition to recover his energy. These days, the memories of his early twenties where he felt rejuvenated after a good night’s sleep seemed like a lifetime ago.
Today, like every other day, Seiichirou was told, “You can go home now, you know.” It sounded like they were saying “I’ll let you go home early” and were graciously sending him home. However, it had been his day off—he had been called into work to do trivial tasks.
Yet as Seiichirou remembered that he hadn’t done anything on his days off recently besides sleeping like the dead, he found it was worth being out in the sun-drenched city and decided to take a small detour on his way home.
That was where everything went wrong.
White pillars, patterned walls, and a blue sphere in the center of a high, domed ceiling.
It looks like the European architecture I saw as a student, Seiichirou thought dimly.
His fascination with the details of his surroundings was a way for his brain to escape his current reality.
Many people stood around him in the large room, as if encircling him.
None of them looked to be Japanese—in fact, their hair and eyes were all sorts of different colors. They wore garments you’d never see in Japan… Armor, clergy robes… Seiichirou wondered if he’d stumbled onto the set of a fantasy movie.
“Success! Success!”
“The Holy Maiden has arrived!”
“Yeaaaaah!”
These foreigners, who had been silent until that moment, all began to shout. Amid the frenzy, one man watched on with quiet, cold eyes. The peculiar darkness to his appearance set against his good looks stood out to Seiichirou.
The girl beside Seiichirou was looking around with a similarly perplexed expression. In stark contrast to the foreboding man, a beautiful young man wearing flashy clothes that looked luxurious approached them and offered the girl his hand.
Oh, right, Seiichirou remembered.
He had worked on his day off, and on his way home afterward, he had stopped by a shopping mall. After browsing at the bookstore, Seiichirou decided he was going to cook for the first time in a while, so he bought ingredients at the grocery store on the underground level. And then…
And then… That’s right…
On Seiichirou’s way home from the mall, he heard a girl’s scream and ran toward the voice. A girl who looked like she was in high school was being swallowed up by the ground.
“No! Somebody! Somebody, help me!!”
At that point, only the girl’s upper body was visible, and she was sinking even farther into the circle of light on the ground.
The girl cried and reached out to him. Seiichirou took her hand without thinking.
Knights accompanied the young man as he took the girl away, leaving Seiichirou behind. A few men who resembled priests led him to a separate room and offered him an explanation.
They introduced themselves not as priests, but as sorcerers and ministers of the royal court. This world existed in a different dimension than the world where Seiichirou was from, and they were currently inside the royal palace of the Romany Kingdom.
In the Romany Kingdom, there was a forest full of miasma known as the Demon Forest. About once every hundred years, miasma would gush forth, and the kingdom would be ravaged by a plague. A holy maiden—a girl with special powers—could purify it, and so they would learn of her location through a divine revelation. The Holy Maiden could live in Romany, or in another kingdom, or she could live in another world entirely.
This time, the Holy Maiden had been a girl living in Seiichirou’s world, so they had gathered the kingdom’s brightest minds and performed an ancient, secret art: the parallel world–summoning spell.
Parallel world? Holy Maiden? Kingdom? Miasma?
Truthfully, Seiichirou was mentally exhausted, and his mind was filled with thoughts of work; he hadn’t been able to comprehend a single thing they said to him.
This might even be a daydream I’ve slipped into because I’m so tired, he thought.
The minister continued his explanation.
Seiichirou was, as it were, an ordinary person who accidentally got dragged into the summoning of the Holy Maiden. As the kingdom was responsible for this, they would be taking care of Seiichirou’s food, clothing, and shelter.
“Do you have any other requests?” the man asked.
Seiichirou was coming up blank; he tried to consider the question.
They’ll take care of my food, clothing, and shelter? Does this mean I don’t have to go back to the office anymore? That I don’t have to work? And that I don’t have to work from the crack of dawn until the very last train, taking phone calls straight through my breaks without eating, cramming a jelly energy drink down my throat because I can’t even make it through one nutrition bar? Or having to stave off the drowsiness with caffeine as I respond to other departments’ unreasonable requests?
Seiichirou was so exhausted.
He was tired of working from morning until night.
And having a life that was nothing but work and sleep.
Seiichirou’s mind, however, was already impaired.
Before he realized what he was doing, he looked at the minister’s plump, distinctive face and said:
“Please give me a job.”