It was another sweltering hot day in the Tochigi prefecture. It was not the kind of day where someone would normally wear all black clothing. There was one notable exception. She just happened to be walking home with her friend as usual. She was clothed in black from head to toe. She even had poorly applied black eye shadow and lipstick on. she was the kind of girl that most people would cross to the other side of the sidewalk to avoid if they were seeing her for the first time.

The local residents were used to seeing this duo walking past and talking about typical preteen nonsense. The girl in question was the definition of a chunibyo. Her hair was up in a very gaudy long twin-tail with black lace bows. She wore a black button-down shirt with a black blazer over it but kept her arms out of the sleeves. Her cute black skirt had black lace frills and small, glossy black bows. She finished her odd look with black thigh-high socks and short, lace-up, black heel boots.

The girl walking next to her was by comparison quite normal looking. She wore the standard white dress shirt and green plaid skirt of her school. She was in her second year of middle-school. Her hair was a light brown and she wore it short in a slightly messy pixie cut. It was hot so she was carrying her green button-down vest between the handles of her satchel. Her plain clothing only served to make her friend’s style stand out more.

As they walked home from school the topic of conversation was the usual. Every day the two of them would walk home talking about anime, manga, and light novels. The favorite subject of discussion was Isekai novels. The normal looking girl was named Ito Kanako. Her favorite stories and shows were about girls being summoned or reborn as royalty or nobility. Like most girls her age, her interest was mostly in the stories where the protagonist was the central love interest of every charming and handsome man in the kingdom.

The Chuni in black was named Hasegawa Rin. Her favorite type of Isekai stories centered around demonlords. She wasn’t very interested in love and more disturbingly was very interested in violence and warfare. She liked to talk about ways she would do things if she were summoned to another world as the demonlord. She was once again chatting with Kanako about just that. She had watched an anime about a boy who was reincarnated into the position of demonlord the previous night. She was going on at length about the ways he failed to take advantage of his modern knowledge in using his troops. This was a subject that annoyed her and the reason she complained about it regularly.

Kanako was only halfway listening to Rin. She wondered for the thousandth time if Rin even realized how ridiculous the whole demonlord thing was. She knew that her fantasy of being summoned as the beautiful heroine and being showered with attention from all the men was absurd. She would settle for being noticed by one of the cute boys in the third or fourth year. She also liked the school romance genre but she never bothered to talk about that with her friend because she knew that Rin was obsessed with Isekai and demonlords. As the conversation continued one-sidedly, Kanako began wondering if Rin would fall in love if the man were a demonlord.

There was a sudden bright light and Rin found herself falling. She could hear Kanako yelling from above her but it sounded weird. It was like she was miles away even though she only looked like she was a few feet up. The whiteness around her grew and the sound faded. Rin’s heart was racing as she struggled to climb back the way she had fallen. The problem was that it didn’t feel like she was in a hole or even touching dirt. She actually felt like she was floating in a pool. She also felt sleepy and since she couldn’t see or hear she drifted off to sleep.

Where am I? I can feel the floor beneath me and it’s cold. It feels like smooth stone. I’m still so sleepy but this floor is freezing against my skin. Wait, am I naked? Why am I curled up naked on the floor? I guess I’ll have to open my eyes and see what’s going on. I’m still so sleepy though.

As I opened my eyes, what greeted them was about the last thing I was expecting. I was indeed laying naked on a smoothly polished stone floor. The next thing I saw was movement. There were a bunch of old men in robes around me. I was, needless to say, scared senseless wondering what they were going to do to me. The men were bobbing their heads in rhythm and had their hands next to them in a weird bowing position like you would see in some anime where they were performing a dogeza.

The next thing I spotted in my confusion was a knight? What is this, a dream? The knight was walking towards me with something in his hands. I began backing away as quickly as I could. He stopped and looked at me with a look of apology before laying something down on the floor and backing away. He said something but I couldn’t make out what he said. The knight backed up behind the circle of men who were still bowing and now that I listened they were chanting something. He pointed to whatever was on the floor and made motions like he wanted me to do something.

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I scooted closer to whatever was on the floor while watching the knight and the circle of men around me. When I got close enough I could tell that it was some kind of clothing. I picked it up and held it up to see what it looked like and was both impressed and repulsed. The dress was a gorgeous piece with lots of lace and frills. It also had some kind of undergarments in it. The whole thing looked like something you might see in some show about English nobles. There were also matching slippers. It was all very pretty and everything was in a dazzling white! I wanted to puke.

Self respect gave way to necessity however and I began getting dressed. I didn’t want to wear this frilly white princess wannabe suit but it was freaking cold! I started with what I think is called a pair of pantaloons. I began pulling them on but I was in for a rude shock. These things had no crotch in them at all! What the crap is this? Are these people all perverts? I quickly pulled the dress on over the top of the undergarments and at least now they couldn’t look at me naked.

After getting the slippers on, I stood up and tried to walk towards the knight. I had only taken a few steps when he held out his hands and started jabbering at me in that foreign language. I didn’t know what was going on but I didn’t want any part of it. I tried to go the other direction but he ran around the bowing men and did the same thing. I suppose a lot of girls, like my friend Kanako, would have been drooling over this guy. He had the classic blond hair and blue eyed European prince look. He was fairly handsome now that I looked but that wasn’t what I was worried about.

After trying several different directions, it became apparent that he wasn’t going to let me leave the circle of old guys. When I looked closer I noticed that the circle was in fact just that. There was some kind of elaborate circle pattern with thousands of smaller circles and writing carved into the floor and filled with a metal, maybe silver. I recognized this, I was standing on a magic circle and these guys were chanting some kind of ritual magic or something! I was finally interested in staying.

The handsome knight kept talking to me in soothing tones but I couldn’t understand a word. I began pacing and looking at the magic circle. It was neat but I still got bored after a few minutes. Since it didn’t seem like the guy was going to let me leave, I sat down in the center of the circle. I began looking at the old guys chanting the spell around me. Only then did I notice that only a few of them were old. Most of the guys in the circle were actually younger men. The thought of a bunch of young men staring at me naked made my face flush and I wanted to cry from embarrassment.

My embarrassment faded when I realized that none of these guys were opening their eyes at all. They were all chanting and bowing in some kind of trance. It was really creepy but somehow reassuring. Just as I was feeling better I heard the knight talking again and I realized that unlike all of the other guys, he definitely saw me naked and even watched me as I got dressed in this weird clothing. I could feel my cheeks burning again.

I glared at the knight and he almost flinched. It was honestly pretty funny and if it had happened to somebody else I might have laughed. The knight looked stricken and I realized he had no idea why I was glaring at him. I relented, after all, he had brought me clothing. So I settled down to wait some more for them to finish whatever spell they were chanting.

At some point I dozed off and when I awoke, I found a silver tray of fruit, cheese, and bread near my head. I ate in silence to the droning of something like thirty men chanting. I finished a little of the cheese and bread before trying the fruit. The cheese was weird. It was really soft and smelled terrible but it tasted amazing. The bread was hard, brittle, and flat like a big cracker. I used it to scoop some of the cheese on. It tasted great but the smell and the texture both put me off.

I decided to give the fruit a try. I picked up what looked like a plum and took a small bite. I was surprised to find that it had a texture like a cucumber and tasted like a sweet but sour watermelon. I really enjoyed that part of the meal. There was also something in a cup for me to drink. I was surprised to find that the liquid in the cup tasted like soured orange juice but sweeter and it was definitely alcoholic. Did these guys know that I was underage? Were they trying to get me drunk so I would do something?

The answer hit me as I was looking around suspiciously at all the chanting men. I had told Kanako about it many times on our walks home. They didn’t have any means of purification so it was safer to drink alcohol in every beverage than to drink the water. I was a little disappointed but still it told me something that I had already suspected. These people weren’t very advanced. Sure they had magic, but they weren’t very advanced in technology or research. I had a few advantages here but the chilly feeling on my nether regions told me that I should be cautious.

Suddenly the pitch and tempo of the chanting began to increase and there was an ominous glow coming from the circle under me. The knight came back with a maid in tow and she rushed into the circle where she grabbed the tray off the floor and seemed to be begging me to hand her the cup. I didn’t mind and gave it to her and she gratefully scurried out of the room looking fearfully at the circle and stealing glances at me. Am I in trouble here? The knight was back to his placating soothing babble but a hand signal from one of the chanting men silenced him. Then there was a bright white flash…